Leading an adventurous lifestyle recently paid off for Sharon Hammond, West Plains, who made an appearance on the game show “You Bet Your Life,” winning the top prize and having a great experience along the way.
She went through an audition process that included answering 65 qualifying questions, followed by a Zoom audition, which required her to work through some technology glitches that had her feeling she had blown her chance. But then she got a call from a show representative who asked if she was still interested, conducted the audition, and was chosen to be flown to Hollywood to appear on the show.
Hammond said she had been chosen at one point to be a contestant on the game show “Password,” but the host suffered a heart attack before she got a chance to appear.
“You Bet Your Life” was first popular in the 1950s and 60s, with comedian Groucho Marx as the host. It has been revived with Jay Leno as host and Kevin Eubanks as co-host, and Hammond was a part of the first season of the game show’s reboot. The premise is to answer a series of trivia questions in a specific category with increasing dollar values, with the choice of betting the contestants’ winnings in hopes of answering a higher value question and winning more.
She and her trivia partner, a young marathon runner from California, ended up taking home $5,500, the maximum amount that can be won. The topic was Hawaii, and she felt confident about the questions because she had visited Hawaii before.
Being on the game show was fun, she says, but a lot less glamorous than she imagined. It included being in full makeup at 6:15 in the morning and sitting in a green room all day with other contestants while waiting for her turn to appear. It was taped in Los Angeles on Sept. 10 of last year and aired on the Springfield Fox affiliate, Channel 5, on May 18 and again June 10. The episode may be viewed on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92bXl9ra40.
In it she describes life events in an exchange with Leno, including a chance meeting with the Dalai Lama on a glacier in Canada. She had arrived at the Athabascan Glacier in Alberta, traveling alone, and as such was allowed to ride in a tour bus onto the glacier with the Dalai Lama and his entourage.
“They didn’t want to take a bus with just me on it,” she further explained to the Quill. She described the Dalai Lama as friendly, and constantly laughing. At one point, she said she asked an English speaker in his group why he laughed all the time, and it was explained that was how Tibetans expressed their pleasure, by laughing out loud. It didn’t make the show, but she also talked about how amusing it was to her that the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader in Buddhism, was wearing his traditional robes – and Nike tennis shoes.
Hammond considers herself to be an outgoing “people person,” which came in handy in her work in banking. She had been living in Detroit for 30 years and working at Mazda in human resources before Hammond moved with her family to West Plains in 1993. Her banking career began when she went to work for Community First Banking Company in West Plains in 1998.
She continued her banking career at Landmark Bank, ultimately retiring as an assistant vice president. Part of her job was to lead groups of bank customers on trips, including an African safari, and she met members of a Maori tribe in Australia. She thought part of being chosen to be on the game show was helped by having interesting stories to tell about her travels.
She hasn’t checked everything off her bucket list, though, which includes a trip to South America to visit Machu Picchu in Peru.
“Everyone lives a different life, but how could anyone be satisfied sitting in one place?” she wonders. She also hasn’t ruled out going on another game show if the opportunity presents itself, and emphasized she enjoyed meeting people from all walks of life from all over the country as part of the experience.
She retired from banking in 2007 as an assistant vice president at Landmark Bank, then worked for the West Plains Housing Authority. Locals may also recognize Hammond as a member of Rotary Club and for her service on the Heart of the Ozarks United Way board as executive director.
During an appearance on the Ozarks Fox A.M. morning show related to being on “You Bet Your Life,” she mentioned she had cooking as a hobby and afterwards a show producer asked if she would be interested in doing a cooking segment and she seems up for that, too.
As she told Leno during her game show appearance, “I’ve had about nine lives and they’ve all been really good, Jay.”
