Hillina Sawyer remembers watching the “The Price is Right” on television with her mother in the late 1970s. So one can imagine the Orrington resident’s excitement when she recently was invited to “come on down” out of the audience to participate in the legendary television game show.

“I was in total shock. I literally flew down to the stage,” said Sawyer, who attended the June 30 taping while on a trip to Southern California. “I didn’t even have time to hug my family members, but I remember hugging everyone in the front row. I was so nervous, I had butterflies in my stomach.”

Sawyer wasn’t allowed to reveal how far she advanced in the show, or whether she won any prizes. Her friends, co-workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Bangor, and the rest of the nation will find out Friday morning, however, whether the 41-year-old returned to Maine with, say, a new car, a bedroom set or tickets for a tropical vacation.

The show will be aired at 11 a.m. on local CBS affiliate WABI-TV.

There are about 325 contestants in the audience per show, Sawyer said, and only nine are picked to go to the front row, where they compete to make it to the stage and play the show’s famous games, such as Plinko, Hi Lo and Cliff Hangers. The goal is to wind up in the Showcase Showdown, where contestants can win cars, furniture and trips.

Getting to the front row was a long process, the California native said. She was on the West Coast with her 8-year-old daughter Trinity – husband Drew was competing at a jujutsu tournament in Massachusetts – and had applied for tickets online.

Sawyer’s group, which included her brother, sister and a brother-in-law, arrived at the studio at 7:30 a.m. They were each assigned a number and told to return at 12:30 p.m.

When the contestants returned to the studio, they were lined up by number, asked their name and occupation – Sawyer is a medical technician and estimates she draws blood from around 10,000 veterans a year – and finally the group went into the studio.

Sawyer said she was the second person called down in the first group of four contestants. The first person called happened to be sitting next to her.

Contestants have a chance to chat with each other and joke around with host Drew Carey during breaks.

Sawyer now watches “The Price is Right” only when it’s shown in primetime. This morning, however, Sawyer and her co-workers will gather around one of two television sets brought into the office for the purpose of watching the show.

For Sawyer, however, there was nothing like being there in person.

“Just meeting the people around you is fun, even if you don’t get called up,” she said. “The electricity, what you feel in the audience, is just totally amazing.”

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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