A Canadian man from Brampton, Ont., is riding a major streak of luck after winning more than US$37,000 in prizes on the popular American game show The Price is Right.
Sergio Barboza, 56, says he was lucky just to make it into the audience for a taping of The Price is Right last August, after waiting on standby for his flight and joining a waitlist for the show.
“We just wanted to show our faces on television and say to our friends, ‘Hey, we were there,'” Barboza told The Morning Show on Tuesday.
Barboza and his friend, Danny Franzini, gave up their August long weekend plans to attend a taping of the show, with no guarantees they would even make it into the audience. However, they did eventually make it in, perhaps because of the brightly coloured Canada T-shirts they wore to stand out.
“Oh Canadrew,” the shirts said. “I’d like to bid a loonie, eh.”
Barboza sat in the back corner of the audience and he says he was shocked when they called him up to be a contestant.
“I said, ‘Did they just call my name?'”
The Brampton resident says he used a time-tested strategy: “I bid a dollar above the next person.”
He says the game show was challenging, particularly because he had to convert everything to U.S. dollars in his head. However, he ultimately prevailed over the other contestants, netting more than US$37,000 worth of prizes, including a brand new Mitsubishi Mirage sports car.
Now he’s basking in his victory and waiting to sort out one final detail: his taxes.