Once the large camera focused squarely on her pensive face, Kimberlee Hole had trouble coming up with a quick response under the bright, warm lights of the big stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t known what happened,\u201d Hole said of her experience as a contestant on the television game show hit, \u201cWheel of Fortune\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just froze. That\u2019s all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the 41-year-old Auburn woman, spinning the famous \u201cWheel\u201d is more difficult than it appears on commercial TV.<\/p>\n
Hole, however, conquered her brief camera shyness, relaxed and eventually cashed in. She passed two tossup rounds, solved the final puzzle and left the Culver City, Calif., studio with $8,750 (before taxes) the most cash won among the three contestants vying for top prizes on the show.<\/p>\n
Her 15 minutes of national game show fame was filmed back on Nov. 21. It aired earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Hole\u2019s husband, Duane, and two sisters accompanied her to Southern California. They joined the live audience as Hole stepped on stage for the taping of the episode.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ecstatic to see it on TV (for the first time),\u201d said Hole, a mother of one son, Connor, 17, and a lifelong Auburn-Kent resident. \u201cI enjoyed the experience. It was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hole, a medical assistant by day, has fun with games in her leisure time.<\/p>\n
She is pretty good with a cue stick, especially when it comes to serious 9-ball. While Hole is considered an amateur, she has qualified to play against the pros on regional and national women\u2019s billiard tours.<\/p>\n
Hole, a Kent-Meridian High School graduate, is a longtime fan of the \u201cWheel of Fortune\u201d. She made it to the show after surviving a long process of auditions. She entered her name on a card when the \u201cWheel Mobile\u201d came to the nearby Emerald Queen Casino in Fife. Her name was drawn from a large, spinning wheel.<\/p>\n
She passed her early auditions, including one that involved about 130 other prospects in a regional tryout at Seattle.<\/p>\n
The judges liked her stage presence and delivery. She ultimately got the final call to appear in Culver City.<\/p>\n
Filming took all day, Hole said, but it was an interesting and worthwhile process between brushes of makeup from the stage crew and timed applause from the audience.<\/p>\n
About the only thing that caught Hole by surprise was the diminutive Vanna White, the game show\u2019s letter-turning assistant, who took time to greet each contestant before the filming.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a bean pole, paper thin,\u201d Hole said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how skinny she was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Vanna was great, a sweetheart. Everybody was great, and (host) Pat (Sajak) was funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hole wasn\u2019t disappointed she didn\u2019t win an exclusive trip to Europe or Canada, as her competitors did. She just wanted the cash for two reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to pay off bills and go on a family vacation in April (to Mexico),\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Whenever she sees the show on TV, Hole now can pass on her cameo experience to inquisitive family and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure the story will get more elaborate as time goes by,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once the large camera focused squarely on her pensive face, Kimberlee Hole had trouble coming up with a quick response under the bright, warm lights of the big stage.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t known what happened,\u201d Hole said of her experience as a contestant on the television game show hit, \u201cWheel of Fortune\u201d.
\n\u201cI just froze. That\u2019s all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":12519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12518"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}