Andi Moore was down on her luck.
The 50-year-old Everett resident lost her job in July and hasn’t landed a new one.
There had been nothing but dark clouds for this divorced mother of three until a new online reality game show provided a potential gold lining.
Moore is one of three finalists on AOL’s “Gold Rush,” an interactive game where contestants vie for a weekly prize of $100,000 in gold. Earlier this week, she was whisked away to Miami, and Moore’s showdown with two other contestants was filmed Tuesday.
The game, which was created by Mark Burnett, the brains behind “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” airs exclusively online and will be posted on the Web site, goldrush.aol.com, on Friday.
The winner of the weekly $100,000 gold bar gets a chance to compete with other weekly winners for the $1 million grand prize in a few weeks.
“It’s just all surreal right now,” Moore said in a phone interview after she arrived in Miami on Monday. “This morning at 4 o’clock, I left my apartment in Everett and now I’m in Miami, and it’s just strange.”
Strange, but true. And the chance to score that kind of cash is coming at just the right time for Moore.
“It’s serendipitous,” said Moore, who said her job as a telephone banker was outsourced in July. “This would be a nice chunk of change. Basically, what I need to do is pay off my bills that I’ve run up since I’ve been out of work, and I would like to invest the rest and let it work for me.”
Playing the game online was a little diversion from the job search and something Moore felt compelled to do.
“I checked it out online when saw an ad for it, and when I saw that it was puzzles and games, I knew it was right up my alley,” Moore said. “So I played … never thinking that I would ever possibly get to the finals.”
Each week, players have a chance to complete a series of puzzles and trivia questions, many of which are based on pop culture. The first three players from around the country to complete them get a chance to play for the big prize in that week’s city, where they play a real-life version of some of the puzzles they completed online.
Moore has been watching online and getting a feel for the game. She’s also a big fan of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” and is taking some tips from those games with her.
“Mostly, I have to remember not to panic,” she said. “Just take it slow and get it done.”
If she gets stuck, she can call on one of five “Gold Buddies” for help. These are fellow players of the game who can be consulted, similar to the “phone-a-friend” lifeline on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
These are people she met online while playing the game. She doesn’t even know where some of them live, but they each have a particular specialty, such as sports, music, movies and television, and she has an expert on Miami for those pesky local questions.
As for Moore’s expertise?
“I’m old. That’s my strong point,” she said. “I’ve been around for a while, been around the block a couple of times. I know what’s going on.”
Reporter Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
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