It's been six years now since my first of seven experiences surprising people with money from Publishers Clearing House. Yes, it's real!
On two different trips in 2008 and 2009, I traveled to Minnesota, North Dakota, Michigan, and Indiana, in a collection of adventures like no other kind on Earth. Surprising winners with big checks for $1,000 and $10,000 may not sound as huge as the millions some others get, but I promise you the excitement we brought into each small town we visited was no less spectacular!
On Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, my fellow Prize Patrol Deputy and I arrived at the Moose Lake Florists in Moose
Lake, Minnesota to pick up the flowers we'd ordered in advance of the trip. It's also where we planned to have
our Publishers Clearing House balloons blown up. My colleague Jack told the owner we were coming
from Publishers Clearing House in New York to pick up the flowers on that exact day,
but he had a feeling she didn’t believe him. When we pulled up in the Prize Patrol
van and walked into her shop with our Prize Patrol jackets on, and
smiles happily in place, she was shocked!
She had prepared the flowers just in case, but said she still didn’t believe it "until she saw the whites of our eyes".
The florist shops we used doubled as media rendezvous points as well, an easy place we could inform the local media to meet us, before heading to the still-unannounced winner’s home nearby. None of the Duluth-area media we'd contacted were able to make it, possibly because we weren’t awarding millions of dollars, or maybe just because they had bigger stories to cover somewhere else. The small town of Moose Lake knew we had arrived in town though, and word spread very fast! Besides just the local coffee shop patrons and other passers-by ogling at us, wondering if we were some elaborate hoax or the real deal, two local newspaper publishers quickly showed up to cover the story. We may not have made CBS News that night, but we were happy to have the Moose Lake Star Gazette run the story on their front page for a few weeks!
Of course everyone wanted to know who the winner was, but we kept that top secret, as we'd been trained to do. Especially in a small town like this one, the chances of someone knowing and alerting the winner were much greater. So we finally get going, my colleague Jack at the steering wheel with the big check near his seat, ready to grab it in a hurry, and me in the back of the caravan with a dozen red roses and a bunch of inflated balloons, ready to jump out the side door once we pulled up to the winner’s home (still known only to us).
The newspaper publishers were following us in their pickup trucks, and the adrenaline was officially flowing big time! We turned down this road and that, over that hill and down this road, finally arriving on an unpaved dirt road 15 minutes outside of town. We see our winner’s house, and we pull up quickly between his house and the neighbor’s. Immediately, one of the newspaper publishers jumps out of his truck and runs up to our car window.
“I gotta know right now! Who’s the winner??!!”
Jack showed him the check with the winner’s name.
“Aaagh! That’s my next door neighbor! I live right there!”
It turns out, the newspaper publisher in Moose Lake lived right next door to our first winner! He'd followed us all the way from town, watching us turn on this road and that, down all these back roads along the way, and as we finally turned on his street, his heart was pounding away furiously, wondering if it was him who had won!
As it turned out, the winner wasn't home, and though we tried to find him at his job (we always spent hours looking, asking people where the winner worked if they weren't home), we never did locate him--the only time that happened to us. But we left the big check, the balloons, the flowers, and the champagne with the newspaper guy, the winner's next-door neighbor, and just mailed the real check once we got back to the office that week.
So the moral of the story is, surprises are fun, and big surprises are bigger fun! Don't risk telling anyone just in case! And even if you're not a winner, whether from Publishers Clearing House or in any way in life, be happy for your neighbor, and for the experience of their big win. Moose Lake certainly had a fun experience that day, and so did I! More stories from other trips to come in future daily reflections. Thanks for reading this one!
The florist shops we used doubled as media rendezvous points as well, an easy place we could inform the local media to meet us, before heading to the still-unannounced winner’s home nearby. None of the Duluth-area media we'd contacted were able to make it, possibly because we weren’t awarding millions of dollars, or maybe just because they had bigger stories to cover somewhere else. The small town of Moose Lake knew we had arrived in town though, and word spread very fast! Besides just the local coffee shop patrons and other passers-by ogling at us, wondering if we were some elaborate hoax or the real deal, two local newspaper publishers quickly showed up to cover the story. We may not have made CBS News that night, but we were happy to have the Moose Lake Star Gazette run the story on their front page for a few weeks!
Of course everyone wanted to know who the winner was, but we kept that top secret, as we'd been trained to do. Especially in a small town like this one, the chances of someone knowing and alerting the winner were much greater. So we finally get going, my colleague Jack at the steering wheel with the big check near his seat, ready to grab it in a hurry, and me in the back of the caravan with a dozen red roses and a bunch of inflated balloons, ready to jump out the side door once we pulled up to the winner’s home (still known only to us).
The newspaper publishers were following us in their pickup trucks, and the adrenaline was officially flowing big time! We turned down this road and that, over that hill and down this road, finally arriving on an unpaved dirt road 15 minutes outside of town. We see our winner’s house, and we pull up quickly between his house and the neighbor’s. Immediately, one of the newspaper publishers jumps out of his truck and runs up to our car window.
“I gotta know right now! Who’s the winner??!!”
Jack showed him the check with the winner’s name.
“Aaagh! That’s my next door neighbor! I live right there!”
It turns out, the newspaper publisher in Moose Lake lived right next door to our first winner! He'd followed us all the way from town, watching us turn on this road and that, down all these back roads along the way, and as we finally turned on his street, his heart was pounding away furiously, wondering if it was him who had won!
As it turned out, the winner wasn't home, and though we tried to find him at his job (we always spent hours looking, asking people where the winner worked if they weren't home), we never did locate him--the only time that happened to us. But we left the big check, the balloons, the flowers, and the champagne with the newspaper guy, the winner's next-door neighbor, and just mailed the real check once we got back to the office that week.
So the moral of the story is, surprises are fun, and big surprises are bigger fun! Don't risk telling anyone just in case! And even if you're not a winner, whether from Publishers Clearing House or in any way in life, be happy for your neighbor, and for the experience of their big win. Moose Lake certainly had a fun experience that day, and so did I! More stories from other trips to come in future daily reflections. Thanks for reading this one!
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