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Time was right for her to come on down

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published January 8, 2007

SOUTH PASADENA - Maureen Noonan was hooked the first time she heard the words "Come ooooon down" on The Price Is Right 34 years ago.

Noonan remembers exactly where she was and what she was doing. She was 12 and home from school because she wasn't well. It was Sept. 4, 1972, the day the game show premiered.

"I remember it was very fun and I said, 'I want to do this someday,' " she recalled Thursday.

That someday came last fall, when Noonan was selected from among hundreds of hopefuls to be a contestant on the popular, long-running television program. The show, taped Nov. 2, will air at 11 a.m. today on WTSP-Ch. 10.

At her South Pasadena home Thursday, Noonan breathlessly recounted every detail of what she described as the most amazing event in her life. She talked about requesting tickets for the show, the day they arrived by mail, the bright yellow T-shirt she decorated to wear, the parking spot in Los Angeles that just happened to bear the same number as her studio ticket and her meeting with the "very handsome" Bob Barker.

Noonan, who has carefully assembled a file folder with keepsakes from her Price Is Right appearance, said she decided to send for show tickets when she and her partner, Ken Berg, booked a cruise that was scheduled to leave from California. "We almost didn't go on this trip, but we just said, 'Let's go.' We ended up having a blast," said Noonan.

"I sent for these tickets six months before the cruise," the former Pinellas County Schools substitute teacher said. But when they hadn't arrived a month before the California trip, Noonan, 46, called CBS, the network that airs the Price Is Right. She was on the phone with the network when the tickets arrived by mail.

That, said Noonan, was just one of many happy coincidences associated with her appearance on the show.

She and Berg were among "hundreds of people" who arrived for the show, she said. "You're waiting hours to get in. We were there since 7:30 in the morning," she said. Taping didn't begin until about 5 p.m.

Naturally ebullient, Noonan immediately began making friends, telling potential contestants the price of a can of Dole pineapple ($1.79), Airborne ($4.99) and Little Debbie cakes - her partner's favorite - ($1.99). She was dressed in the canary yellow Florida T-shirt she had embellished with appliques representing her pets, which she considered her good luck charms. She caught the attention of producers and said she probably surprised them by mentioning she wanted to be on the show's 4,683rd episode, which was being taped that day.

During last week's interview, Noonan explained she had read an article on the flight to California with that information.

Noonan made it through preliminary rounds of the game show, which included guessing the prices of an oriental rug and Bowflex exercise equipment. The exercise equipment, one of her prizes, now sits in her home. Later she guessed the prices of the very items she had talked about earlier that day and went on to play the dice game, where she won $4,000.

She made it to the Showcase Showdown, where she competed for a prize that included six designer purses, a week in Paris and a car.

"It was the most remarkable feeling in my life. It was like going to the moon for an hour. It lived up to every expectation I ever had since I was 12. It was fun, fun, fun."

[Last modified January 7, 2007, 22:30:55]