The answer is... a trip with Jeopardy host to Galapagos Islands

by JOHN LASKO

News-Times reporter

Laurene Pasztor started watching "Jeopardy!" when Art Fleming was the host of the popular quiz show.

"It's a family thing," she admitted.

As part of celebrating the number one-rated syndicated quiz show's 25th anniversary, viewers were given the opportunity to sail with host Alex Trebek on a 10-day voyage aboard the National Geographic Endeavour to the Galapagos Islands -- located nearly 600 miles off Ecuador's Pacific coast on the equator. They consist of 13 large and six smaller islands.

In order for the retired postal employee from Amherst Township and avid fan of the game show to qualify for the once-in-a-lifetime trip, Pasztor had to register online and answer that night's correct "Final Jeopardy!" question.

Two weeks after the contest ended, Pasztor was notified by telephone on May 13 that she was one of 25 people -- of more than 2.2 million entries -- selected to join Trebek to tour the exotic locale.

"I keep pinching myself and my husband was asking me why I have bruises all over my arm," she joked. "My kids have been teasing me because they say you're not going to care about the turtles or anything else other then getting a picture with Alex."

In October, she and her husband Michael will fly from Cleveland to Miami. They will board another plane which will take them to Quito, Ecuador, where the two will board the cruise ship.

However, she admits the celebration has been overshadowed by the death of her father Bart Blaha -- who spent the majority of his life on Lake Erie as a fishing guide -- after suffering a second heart attack the night Pasztor had learned the good news. What made the situation even tougher was Blaha suffered his first heart attack on April 22 and had been released from a Toledo hospital that morning.

"When I had called him to tell him I had won when he was still in the hospital, he was very excited about it," she said.

Then Michael's mother Irene died 10 days later on June 27 after she too suffered a heart attack.

"The excitement factor hasn't started until the last couple of days because we're a little past the funerals and grieving over both our losses," Pasztor said. "It hasn't felt real until the last couple of days."

Ironically, Pasztor and her husband recently received their passports so they would be able to do some traveling on their own.

"My sister and my mother kept telling me to have a passport because if something comes up, it's better to have it and I talked my husband in to doing it," she said. "If we want to go up to Canada again, we were going to have to get one anyway."

Pasztor received a telephone call from Eric Fujiwara from Culver City, Calif.-based Enteractive Solutions Group notifying her of the all-expenses paid trip.

"He said, do you remember entering a contest for Jeopardy and I said yeah," she said. "He said you are a potential winner and I didn't say anything and I got out a piece of scratch paper and started writing everything down he was telling me."

Not knowing if she had indeed won, Pasztor received a FedEx pouch the next morning. Enclosed were seven pages of rules and regulations she had to read, along with an affidavit she had to sign and have notarized.

"That was interesting because you could not be related to or know people who worked at Sony, CBS and all of their subsidiaries to make sure we qualified because it would be very easy to get knocked out of this contest," Pasztor said.

As a way of preparing for their trip, she has been reading books and watching DVDs about the region. Pasztor told the News-Times she is looking forward to seeing all the exotic animals in and out of the water, along with swimming in the crystal clear Pacific Ocean.

"It's incredible and I'm really excited and looking forward to exploring this area," she said.