Middletown Woman on 'The Price is Right'

Middletown, NJ - Melissa Mersmann started watching "The Price is Right" when she was a teenager.

Now 54, Mersmann watches it every day on her lunch hour, when she gets a break from her job as an anesthesia technician at Monmouth Medical Center. And just a few weeks ago, this Middletown resident got to fulfill a life fantasy: She was chosen to compete on the show.

"I'm a terribly big fan of the show. I watch it every day and I would say it's the best show on television," said Mersmann, who has lived in Middletown, off Harmony Road, for the past 17 years. "For my birthday, I flew out to San Diego to visit my sister and we planned to go to the studio for my birthday. We had bought our tickets online several months before, so we drove up to LA for the taping."

Mersmann has been in the studio audience of "The Price is Right" before. But she's never been chosen to compete. Out of the 300 or so people in the audience, only 8 or so are chosen each day as contestants.

But this time Mersmann made sure she stood out: She wore a bright yellow homemade T-shirt that read "Pick me, it's my birthday!" Her sister wore a matching shirt with an arrow on it that read, "Pick her!"

When host Drew Carey called her name to "come on down," Mersmann was in shock.

"I stood up and screamed! I was shaking, I was crying," she told Patch. "I was so excited, but I tried to tell myself, 'Please, Melissa, please, you've got to focus. Just focus.'"

Focus she did. Mersmann knows her consumer product prices. As a daily watcher of the show, she's been honing her skill for years.

"You have to be a good judge, whether it's grocery items or furniture or cars. But you have to be careful: You have to see how close you can get to the actual prices without going over. You really have to think about it."

So just how well did Mersmann do? You'll have to tune in Monday, Dec. 12 to find out. Mersmann will be on "The Price is Right," which airs Dec. 12 on CBS/Channel 2 at 11 a.m. East Coast Time.

And you can bet the staff at Monmouth Medical Center will be watching.

"The doctors I work with in the operating room started asking me, 'What's that show you're always running off to watch?' I told all the people at work they have to watch 'The Price is Right' on Monday, and all my neighbors in Middletown, too. It'll be on in all the doctors' lounges and in the entire hospital. Everybody is so excited."

All photos are credited to Fremantle Media North America