Written by Logan Martinez

CHAPEL HILL-UNC student pharmacists Katie Traylor and three of her friends traveled to Los Angeles in March to compete on The Price is Right. The show aired on April 16. Traylor was selected from the audience to go on stage and she made the most of her opportunity, winning $10,000 and other smaller prizes.

Katie Traylor and her three friends, Allison Presnell, Ashley Campbell, and Danielle Schlafer, were scheduled to attend an annual American Pharmacists Association conference in Los Angeles, so they bought The Price is Right tickets well in advance to ensure their spot in the audience.

Presnell said in order to have a chance at being called to the stage, the group had to be obnoxious and loud to catch the attention of the producers.

“They would come by – there was staff everywhere,” she says. “So we just kind of made up our minds that we were going to be ridiculous and crazy and loud. We sang and we danced and we ran and we high fived. We got to know everyone around us.”

Their antics certainly caught the attention of the staff because it didn’t take long for one of them to be called to the stage.

Traylor describes the process once she was called.

“So we get down to ‘bidder’s row,’ there’s four people at a time and they show an item and you have to bid on it,” she says. “The one I got up there on was the hot tub. Some people bid really low and this one lady bid ridiculously high and I kind of bid in between. It’s so hard to hear anything in there because it’s so loud – everyone is screaming all the time. I wasn’t even sure if I had won or not. You can see me on camera I turn around and look at them like, “Was that me? I get to go now?’ So we all freak out – I think Ashley started crying. I go up there on stage and give Drew Carey like ten different hugs.

Traylor said the game she had to play to win the $10,000 prize was the one she had hoped see. It’s called Grand Game. She had to correctly guess four of the six items were under 7 dollars and 50 cents.

“There was like Allegra-D up there and I knew that wasn’t under $7.50,” she says. “There was like a veggie tray and Ashley was screaming to me from the audience, ‘NOT THE VEGGIE TRAY!’ So I went down the other ones one by one and won $10,000 right there so I freaked out and hugged Drew Carey some more and screamed.”

So, what does Katie plan to do with the prize money?

“I got this new phone that was necessary,” she says. “I’m moving this week so I have some moving expenses and some school expenses—just a small amount of loans to deal with. So I’ll use some of it practically but then we’ll probably have fun and go have a spa day or something.”