Last night, about 30 of Krystina Gustafson's friends packed her living room to watch Wheel of Fortune projected onto a white sheet tacked to the wall. She was about to relive her $17,700 win on the show.
Though she wasn't nervous for the bulk of the taping, she said she dreaded seeing herself on television.
"I was more nervous about watching it than I was about filming it," she said.
Whenever she watched the show with boyfriend Greg Kastner, Gustafson figured out the puzzles before the contestants on TV. But Gustafson said the game was easier from the couch than on the set.
The show tryouts started in October, in a sweltering mall parking lot filled with a sea of other potential contestants in front of the yellow Wheelmobile Winnebago.
When her name was drawn from hundreds of other information sheets submitted that morning, she had been waiting for two hours, with the sunburn to prove it. She clamored to the stage, introduced herself and fulfilled the announcer's request that everyone on stage dance.
Two weeks later, Gustafson was selected to move on to the second round, with a four-hour series of mock Wheel of Fortune games and written puzzle-solving tests. Three weeks after that, she was called and told she made the show.
In December, she finally got to compete on the show she had watched since she was a toddler.
"I'm usually really competitive, so I figured I would be pretty cut throat," she said. "Once I got there, though, I was just so excited to be on the show that I didn't really care."
After the taping, Gustafson kept quiet about her winnings. But last night, her friends gathered to watch Gustafson win a $1,000 gift card to Maui Jim Sunglasses, an eight-day trip to Cabo San Lucas, $11,000 cash, which she designated for rent after graduation, and, above all, the title Wheel of Fortune winner.
