Las Vegans hope ‘Wheel’ spins fortune their way

Hundreds of Las Vegans stand in an echoey convention hall -- giddy, expectant and anxious -- hoping to be picked as contestants during auditions for "Wheel of Fortune," the game show that shoots in Vegas for four weeks this summer.

Who are these people who want to be on "Wheel of Fortune" so bad they devote a Saturday and Sunday to solving word puzzles on a pretend-TV stage?

Melissa White, 26, has been applying to get on the game show since she was 18. Why?

"Number one: I want to be on television. I just love the spotlight. And number two, you get $1,000 just for going on," she tells me. "I want to pay off my truck."

It would be fun to be on "Wheel," she says. Plus, there's the Vanna White factor.

"I did a report on her a long time ago, I think in the sixth grade. She's a pretty cool lady. It takes a lot to smile that long. I did a beauty pageant once. The hardest thing was to smile for hours."

Melissa White -- cheerful and slight yet pillowy as a cocktail waitress -- is drawn to the splendor of Vanna White and "Wheel of Fortune."

Similarly, she was drawn to the splendor of Vegas. She moved here from the Bay Area years ago, to soak up the magnificence of working as a cocktail server.

You see, as White sees it, she grew up on stages and in parades, dancing in the styles of tap, jazz, ballet and hip-hop, and doing gymnastics. When she was 5 or 6, she saw movies featuring casino cocktail waitresses, "with their cute little outfits," and she related and was hooked.

"I was in outfits like that" as a child performer, White says. "I was, like, 'That's my goal,'" to become a cocktail server.

As White waits and hopes for her name to be called, she tells me that when she moved to Vegas, she earned "super easy money" cocktailing at the Silverton, then bartending at the Hooters Hotel pool, which she loved and misses sometimes now as a stay-at-home mom. There was a lot of male "eye candy" at the pool. She quit to have a baby.

This weekend, her husband, Shannon (a bartender turned sheet metal worker) stayed home with their 7-month-old Makenzie so White could come to "Wheel" auditions.

She blesses her application before putting it in a box.

"They just want to get someone with a lot of enthusiasm, who's smart and who doesn't call out weird letters," she says.

Some puzzles at The Venetian are puzzling, like, "I HIT PAY DIRT."

"I've never even heard of that," White says.

I tell her it's an old expression.

"That's not right," she says and smiles, flummoxed. "All us 26-year-olds -- hello!"

Previously, White went to a "Wheel" audition at a Vegas car dealership, and she ended up in the background of a video shoot of a TV news crew:

"I called my husband and said, 'DVR this. I'll try to get my face on TV.' It was like my moment of fame."

"I can't think of anything I want more than to be on TV" because it would make her "feel like a movie star for a little bit, and you go home with some money."

TV people keep calling out names, but not White's. Will she ever get to spin the "Wheel?"

She applauds rivals who hop on stage and announce their life stations: a real estate agent who likes to cook and shop; an audit clerk who takes her daughter to Circus Circus; a surrogate mother who captains tennis teams; a country songwriter.

The owner of an Anytime Fitness club, the large and lively Henry Sawicki, gets called on stage, then is dispatched away to wait for a second audition.

"I'm a game show junkie," Sawicki tells me.

He's been a contestant on "The Price Is Right" (he won $1,100). He was on "Hollywood Squares" (he won $2,500 plus $2,000 in movie rentals). He was on "The Dating Game." ("I didn't get selected for the date, but that's OK because she wasn't that good-looking.") He was on "Love Connection" (a long story).

It took him 60 tries to get on "Price is Right," "the funnest experience ever."

"When they call your name" on "The Price is Right," "it's unbelievable. An adrenaline rush goes through your head. I couldn't believe it. My mind just went mush."

"To say you've done that," he says, "is the coolest thing." He jokes, "I guess in a past life, I was an actor or a game show host."

As Sawicki basks in finishing the first audition, so does the nearby Jim DeFever, 33, the owner of the window tinting company Millennium Tints. He made it on stage and won his puzzle.

"I used to watch this with my grandfather, most of my life," DeFever says. "My grandfather would drink vodka and watch 'Wheel of Fortune.' ... He was an encyclopedia" who would solve puzzles "quicker than anybody."

Next to DeFever, his buddy, J.P. Patterson, 38, in sales, tells me, "I'm here to keep the dream alive.

"I want to go on the show to possibly win more than anyone has ever won. My mom thinks I'm great at this game."

Patterson, a tall and gusty talker, says when he was a kid, there was this one week where he solved three puzzles without any letters showing.

"One was 'Poltergeist.' One was 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.' I don't remember the third one. But I've watched the show ever since."

He waits patiently near White, who stands patiently near Sawicki. They all want on TV, but not on "Jeopardy" (too hard). They keep hope alive. And Patterson figures it's OK he hasn't been picked yet because what else would he be doing instead on a Saturday and Sunday?

"I'd be at home, pounding beers."

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 702-383-0391 or email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.