A star has been born in La Plata County.
This week, longtime Durango resident Erica Max competed on this week’s broadcast of “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me” – National Public Radio’s convivial current events quiz show.
And – spoiler alert – she wins.
In La Plata County, the show in which Max became a quiz-show champion will broadcast on KSUT at 2 p.m. Sunday.
In a phone interview on Saturday, Max, who breeds Danish Warmblood horses at Fire Hjorner Farm, said it was “very hard” to get on the show.
For years, producers of “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me” ignored her repeated pleas to be a contestant – until she sent them a heartfelt email documenting her profound family woes.
“I wrote in my email to them that I had to be on the show, because my brother was on the Sunday Puzzle on Weekend edition, my sister was on Car Talk, and my other brother was on Jeopardy. I told them I was starting to feel inadequate as a sibling,” Max said. “They called me two days later.”
She said she was a wreck before the taping, because she “hadn’t really watched the news all week because I was at a dog show. I thought, wow, I could really make a fool of myself.”
As chance would have it, the questions host Peter Sagal asked her to correctly answer were about the Secret Service, Hong Kong and an issue every Durango resident knows too well: plastic bags.
With a perfect score, Max won a voicemail from legendary radio voice Carl Kasell, who will record any message she chooses and send it to her by MP3 file.
Max said she hasn’t yet decided what she wanted Kassel to say.
“But I did ask my illustrious siblings. It should be good, because whenever someone calls me at home, they’re going to hear Carl Kassel say it,” she said.
While Max has brought honor to herself, her county and her family, she said her “Wait Wait” victory hasn’t propelled her to the top of the Henner (her maiden name) siblings’ hierarchy.
“My 15 minutes of fame have been fun. But it’s hard to hold one’s own with a brother who’s been on Jeopardy,” she said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
