City man is biggest winner
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By ROD STETZER rod.stetzer@lee.net
Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:08 AM CDT
EAU CLAIRE — The overnight-delivered package was opened and stayed in the same place for days.
Orv Gauger of Chippewa Falls was suspicious, and so was his wife, Marcia. The letter inside the package wanted a lot of personal information from Orv Gauger, including his Social Security number.
“I looked at it and said, ‘This is a scam,’” Marcia Gauger said.
It wasn’t.
On Wednesday afternoon, Orv Gauger drove off the lot of Bothun Nissan in Eau Claire in his newly-won 2009 Nissan Murano SUV.
The top-of-the-line vehicle with leather seats, all-wheel drive and enough gadgets that a 10-minute tutorial is necessary, retails for $35,160.
Orv Gauger’s reaction?
“Overwhelmed. Now I believe it. Before it was like, yeah, right,” said Gauger, 66.
It all started when Marcia Gauger and the couple’s daughter, Felicity, were watching the network show “The Biggest Loser.”
An item about a contest flashed on the screen and urged viewers to call a number and answer a question correctly. That’s what Marcia and Felicity did, but they entered Orv’s name.
“I didn’t know that they had entered me,” he said, adding he didn’t watch the show that night.
Later he got a phone call from a man in Burbank, Calif., asking him a series of questions, such as if he worked for Nissan, NBC or a radio station. Orv said no, no and no.
The next day, a Friday, came that overnight-delivered package. Nothing happened until the following Tuesday, when the couple got a call from a man Marcia Gauger called very sweet. The caller said Orv was one of five winners in the nation of the SUV.
(The other winners came from Sulphur, La., Los Fresnos, Texas, Lincoln, Neb. And Elmhurst, Ill.)
“I still didn’t believe it,” Orv Gauger said.
Then the couple got a call from a woman.
“I’m the lady that gives out free Muranos,” she said, instructing the Gaugers to go to the Eau Claire dealership to pick out their new SUV.
Which they did. They picked out one in Merlot, a dark red color, said Paul E. Dondanville, sales and leasing representative at the dealership.
“We found out we had a local winner about a month ago,” Dondanville said. “We’re really excited about it.”
He said the SUV comfortably seats five, gets 18 miles per gallon in the city and 23 on the highway.
And it case you’re wondering, Dondanville said NBC reimbursed the dealership for the cost of the vehicle.
The SUV is quite a change for Orv Gauger, who works part-time in a home-based business. The previous family vehicle was a sturdy 1990 Dodge Ram truck that they’ve had for four to five years.
It’s a good truck, Orv Gauger said. And, no surprise, it’s now for sale.
“I usually drive the speed limit,” Orv Gauger said of his driving habits, adding that way you save gasoline.
He figures the family will put on 10,000-12,000 miles a year on the new vehicle.
“We have a couple of trips lined up,” he said.
Unlike that package, the newly-won SUV is going to be on the move.
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