Oceano woman to compete on ‘The Price is Right’

Heidi “Kiki” Lebreton couldn’t believe it when she heard those iconic words while in the audience of her favorite TV show: “Heidi Lebreton, come on down!”

“It was so exciting,” she said. “It was unbelievable. It was like winning the lotto.”

Lebreton, who lives in Oceano, was in the audience with two of her daughters, Savannah Lebreton-Daniels and Sharlia Lebreton-Gulley, for a special leap year taping of “The Price is Right” on Jan. 6 when she was chosen to be a contestant on the long-running game show hosted by Drew Carey. That episode will air Monday on CBS, but until then, Lebreton, 51, has to keep quiet about the specifics of her experience.

“Everybody has been asking me, ‘Did you win, did you win?’ ” she said. “I just tell them, ‘You’ll have to watch the show!’ ”

Lebreton, a retired child support officer, said she has been a longtime fan of “The Price is Right” — “way back to when Bob Barker was the host” — and she watches it every day. She even once sent the network a letter when she knew she would be in Los Angeles to ask whether she could be on the show. Unfortunately, there weren’t any tapings that week, and her dream went unrealized until this year.

Lebreton said she reapplied to be an audience member after talking about it with her family, and she and two of her daughters (she has five total) made a plan to go to the city for the taping. They met up the night before to make T-shirts, with Lebreton’s reading: “Checked off my bucket list” and “I want a new car Drew!”

“This has been on my bucket list forever, and I finally get to cross it off,” Lebreton said. “It was just so fun to be there.”

A lot of work goes into the show before the actual taping, she said, but the mood was infectious the entire time.

“We were waiting in the line outside, and the people in the line are loud and acting crazy, so I think that one of them is of course going to be picked,” she said. “Then, when you actually get inside, that’s when it gets really exciting. A DJ is playing and the music is pumping and it was just, you had to be there.”

Throughout all of this, Lebreton said she never expected to actually be chosen to compete.

“I was just thinking that it was fun to be there,” she said. “My youngest daughter kept saying, ‘They’re going to pick you, they’re going to pick you,’ but I never expected it.”

Everything after being chosen is a blur, she said, but one she is excited to relive Monday when she watches the episode for the first time.

“It’s just going to be me all by myself, in the quiet and the peace watching it,” she said. “But I have told everyone I know to tape it.”

Watch “The Price is Right” online at www.cbs.com/watch.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 4:38 PM with the headline "Oceano woman to compete on ‘The Price is Right’."