(Photo courtesy of Joni Beckham)
If you are from rural Alaska, winning on the television game show “The Price is Right” carries a price tag they don’t tell you about on the show, as a Bethel resident recently learned when she won big on the program.
Wearing a blue, flowered qaspeq, Joni Beckham earned $63,000 worth of prizes as a Double Showcase Winner. The episode aired on Monday, but was filmed months ago in early November. Beckham is a nurse at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. As she spun the famed wheel, she gave a shout-out to Bethel and her YKHC co-workers.
“I want to say hi to my babies,” Beckham said, “Kennedy, Kayla and Kyler, and my husband, of course, and all my co-workers at my local hospital in Bethel. Hi, guys!”
“Hi, everybody,” television host Drew Carey added.
Beckham’s prizes include a trip for two to Thailand, two cars, a basketball arcade game, a washer and dryer, a refrigerator and more. But to get all her prizes to Bethel, Beckham says, the show is making her pay the shipping from the Lower 48, except on the cars. The show will deliver as far as Anchorage. According to Beckham, the show will not allow her to accept the monetary value of her winnings.
Anna Rose MacArthur is a reporter at KYUK in Bethel.
