Lynn woman wins $25G on game show

LYNN – Lynn resident Debbie Muldoon wanted to be a millionaire, but she certainly wasn’t disappointed to walk away from the hot seat of ABC’s Emmy Award-winning game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” with $25,000.Muldoon, who is not an avid game show watcher and has never been on television, appeared on Monday’s episode of Millionaire, hosted by Meredith Viera.”I was unemployed and my family had been telling me for years I should go on game shows. My niece said, ‘Auntie you should try out for that,’ so I put my name in and strangely they invited me for an audition,” Muldoon said.Unlike many others who were selected to try out for Millionaire, Muldoon passed the test on her first try and also passed the interview portion of the audition. After a couple of weeks, she received a phone call saying she was in the contestant pool and soon after received a phone call inviting her to New York.”I was really surprised and a little freaked out. I scared the dog I screamed so loud and she ran away,” Muldoon said. “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I could have done pretty well and if I couldn’t have won something.”Along with her mother and niece, Muldoon took her best friend Rachel Henry and Rachel’s father, Ed Henry, to New York for support.”(Rachel) is my best friend in the whole wide world – has been for over 20 years,” she said. “She is always there for me, always. My niece got to come to since she is the one who started it all.”Muldoon said she invited Ed Henry to the taping because they’ve shared a running joke about her trivia expertise.”We’d been playing “Trivial Pursuit” for years and he called me ‘Ivan Boesky’ because it was the correct answer to a question he never thought I’d get,” she said. “He has been calling me that for 10 years.”Muldoon wasn’t nervous in front of the audience or the camera and said she thought she had a pretty good chance of hitting the million, but she understands how the game works. She knew that how well she did was contingent upon the set of questions she was given. She also said she was excited that her expert for the “Ask the Expert” lifeline was actor Robert Wuhl.”I was excited because I knew he had a background in history, but he was useless – he got me nowhere,” Muldoon quipped. “I was a little upset, but we had different lifelines than we used to. I got the answer on my own.”Although the expert lifeline didn’t do as well as she had hoped, Muldoon did have a positive experience with Viera.”She is unbelievably nice,” she said. “When I first saw her I was surprised because she’s tiny, tiny, tiny, but she is genuinely excited for you and wants you to do well. I don’t think that comes through the TV so much because you don’t see the interim moments.Muldoon said she made Viera nervous at one point because she chose a lifeline that was out of the ordinary.”I picked a different lifeline probably than other people would have chosen and she was genuinely nervous for me,” she said, adding that Viera sent her a card after her appearance.Muldoon said participating in the game show was an amazing amount of fun and an incredibly “cool” experience, which is really what it was all about.”There is more than one member of my family that said I could have walked with $50,000. My standard response is, ‘No guts, no glory,'” she said. “It was a fantastic experience. I wish I had won more but I am very, very content with what I did win.”Muldoon said the show gave her a much-needed boost in her life.”It was fun way to change my attitude when it was really quite low,” she said. “I struggled with (being unemployed) and some illness last year. It was a very tough year. This came along near the end of the year in the fall and it really helped make me see positive things again. It gave me something really fun, positive and constructive to focus on when other things weren’t going as well.”Muldoon’s plans for the future include finding a job, saving her winnings as a nest egg and, because of the fun she had on Millionaire,