Barrington High grad appearing on 'Jeopardy!' Friday
A Barrington High School graduate will display her knowledge for a nationwide audience later this week as a "Jeopardy!" contestant.
Claudia Hochstein, 28, now living in St. Paul, Minnesota, fulfilled a longtime desire to be on the game show hosted by Alex Trebek in an episode that will run at 3:30 p.m. Friday on ABC 7 Chicago.
Hochstein, who grew up in Barrington, prepared for "Jeopardy!" over the years at trivia nights at bars and other places in the Chicago area and in the Twin Cities. One of her go-to suburban joints was Diamond Jim's Gas Grill in East Dundee, which still has trivia gatherings on Thursday nights.
While the 2008 Barrington High grad is not permitted to reveal the result of her appearance before Friday's airing, Hochstein said she had "major butterflies" when she got on the "Jeopardy!" set at the late-October taping. However, she added, adrenaline kicked in when it was her turn to play.
"You always hear that TV sets are way smaller than they look on TV, so I was expecting it to be really tiny, but it was actually pretty big," she said Wednesday. "Alex is pretty much what I expected - a little aloof - and the consummate master of ceremonies. I think he didn't know what to make of me, because I'm maybe a little more outgoing than a lot of 'J!' contestants."
Hochstein, a 2012 University of Minnesota graduate, is a legislative affairs liaison for the Minnesota Zoo in the Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley.
"I've always been curious and soaked up random information like a sponge," she said. "I wish I could remember as much about something useful as I can remember lines from 'The Simpsons.'"