Shelli Castor could tell you that the third time is the charm.
Or the thirtieth.
The 2009 Sapulpa graduate who still resides in her hometown was a contestant on the popular game show last week. And it wasn’t her first time to try.
“I took the online test multiple times,” she told Sapulpa Times during an interview on Thursday.
“I tried out in 2009 for college Jeopardy in Atlanta, and then two years ago, I tried out in New Orleans, which ultimately led to me being on the show.”
Castor, an editor for the University of Tulsa, told host Alex Trebek on the show that she knew her calling from an early age. “My second-grade teacher gave me a copy of the local (Sapulpa Herald) newspaper and told me to find all the mistakes I could. I found nine in one article.”
Unfortunately, Castor’s early start in editing wasn’t much help when it came to the Final Jeopardy question, of which the category was “Pre-Civil War Presidents.” A category she was somewhat confident about.
The question though, was more difficult that she’d anticipated: “Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: ‘After an extended tour of Europe he retired to Concord…& he died in obscurity'”
“The question mentioned Concord, which led me to think of John Quincy Adams,” Castor said.
As it turned out, it wasn’t Adams, it was the little-known Franklin Pierce. Castor went home with third place, and the expectation of a check for $1,000 arriving soon. She says she’s still waiting on that check.
