CHAFFEE WOMAN SEES TV GAME SHOW DEBUT

CHAFFEE -- The price was right for Michelle Whistler of Chaffee, but so far the product has been slow in arriving.

Michelle said she is a lucky person after winning a 1997 Mercury Tracer on The Price is Right game show in June.

Michelle, 27, and her sister, Ann Whistler, got together Thursday to watch the show for the first time since their return.

Surrounded by 20 young children at Kid's Academy, the daycare they operate together, Michelle and Ann critiqued their performance, pointed each other out to their friends and laughed when Michelle made a bad choice to lose the "showcase."

"I blew it. I overbid bad," Michelle said. "That was just nerves, I didn't think."

Michelle, Ann and their guests all laughed while watching the final round as the crowd booed when Michelle placed her bid. She lost out on a jacuzzi and dining room set.

Michelle has been lucky since the show as well. It seems that winners don't drive off with their prizes from the set -- the cars are ordered and delivered.

Michelle's car was unavailable and the show will be unable to fulfill their obligation to deliver the 1997 vehicle to her. So, Michelle said they are ordering her a 1998 Tracer that should be delivered in about a month.

Michelle was the only winner on that particular taping of Price is Right and host Bob Barker called her "the hero of the show."

Michelle, Ann, their mother Pat Whistler, two aunts from Illinois and Chris and Frank Barthol, both of Camarillo, Calif., attended the show on June 9. Michelle, Ann and their mother had traveled 2,000 miles by van with three other women to attend. It took 29 hours of continuous driving to make it.

"I think that's what got me on the show," Michelle said.

Once there, they went through a screening process and spent 13 hours on or near the set. To make it into position to win the car, Michelle had to out-bid three other contestants to win a bumper-pool table. She brought the table out for the party Thursday.

She was the last person to make it on stage for that show.

When the Whistlers left the show, at about 7 p.m., they stopped at a store to ask directions to a restaurant. "We walked in and Michelle goes, 'we need some place to eat' and then she says, 'I just won a car on The Price is Right,'" Ann said.

This was Ann's second time in the audience of The Price is Right, having attended once before 12 years ago.

"We were crazy from the time Michelle got up there. But she didn't listen to us about anything," Ann said. "But I guess that was a good thing because that's when she got up on stage."

How did Michelle like seeing herself on television? "I looked really big," she said.