Watch this Youngstown woman ‘Come on down!’ on Wednesday
Las Vegas was fun, but Sarah Wakefield really got lucky after she left.
The Youngstown woman and her party were vacationing in Vegas in June when they decided to take a gamble on “The Price Is Right.” They drove all night to Los Angeles to see if they could make it in time for the next morning’s taping of the popular TV game show.
The gambit paid off. The group made it into the audience, and Wakefield was called down to compete. The episode airs 11 a.m. Wednesday on WKBN-TV.
“We decided to try to be on the show, and left Las Vegas at 1 a.m.,” said Wakefield. “We arrived in Los Angeles around 5 a.m. and were pretty close to the front of the line [to get onto the set of ‘The Price Is Right’].
“They interview everybody as they go in, and I was very enthusiastic and it paid off because they called me down,” she said.
She was with her fianc , Jonathan Jenyk of Austintown; her brother, Dan, of Youngstown; and a friend, Molly Conricote of Youngstown.
Wakefield said she was so excited once the taping started and the audience started cheering that she didn’t even hear Rich Fields, the show’s announcer, say her name in that iconic phrase: “Sarah Wakefield, come on down!”
“My brother said, ‘Sarah, get down there!’”
Wakefield is contractually not permitted to reveal how things went on the show before it airs. But she did say that she made it through the bidding round and got up on stage with host Drew Carey.
“I was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Ohio Loves Drew,’ and he made a comment on that. I did say that I’m from Youngstown,” she said. Carey is a native of Cleveland, and his ABC sitcom, “The Drew Carey Show (1995-2004),” was set in that city.
In “The Price Is Right,” contestants guess the price of an object, and the one closest without going over wins. Wakefield first had to bid on golf clubs. She said she’s not a golfer, but did OK.
It wasn’t the first time Wakefield tried to get on the show. The last time she was in California, she took a stab at it, but didn’t make it on.
She said she is a fan of game shows and considers “The Price Is Right” to be the most famous one.
Wakefield said she will watch the show with her mother.
The 25-year-old is an economic assistant with the U.S. Department of Labor in Youngstown. The Ursuline High School and Youngstown State University graduate is also an economics instructor at YSU and an online instructor for DeVry University.
dastolfo@vindy.com