Maine South grad wins $38,600 on Jeopardy
This Maine South High School graduate will take the category "Jeopardy winnings" for $38,600.
Greg Peterson, 17, watched himself on TV competing in the game show's Summer Games Teen Tournament finals Friday from a Park Ridge couch.
When host Alex Trebek said on TV it was anyone's game just before reading off the Final Jeopardy answer, Peterson muttered: "Not really, Alex."
He came up with the winning question "What is Stonehenge?" in Final Jeopardy! (Answer: Some of its pieces, which weighed up to 50 tons, were quarried at Marlborough Downs, about 20 miles away.)
While the correct question doubled his winnings for the day, he fell $1 short of winning the tournament that played out on TV over two weeks.
A collective cry of "Oh my God" erupted in the Park Ridge roomful of family and friends.
"Nothing to sneeze at," 19-year-old friend Nicole Intagliata said. "He could have a Lexus."
Peterson already knew how he had finished -- having competed on the game show in March in California while he was still a Maine South student.
New Jersey student Meryl Federman won the $75,000 grand prize.
"Out of all the losers, you came in first," 18-year-old friend James Jaffe said, referencing "Seinfeld."
Greg Peterson's check arrived Friday -- short $2,700 for California state taxes.
The money will likely go toward graduate school since he's already won a full-ride scholarship to attend Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., this fall.
His second-place finish out of a field of 15 teens nationwide makes his mom, Carole Peterson, beam. She shows off the glossy photos of her son with Trebek.
She's also a former game show contestant. In 1979, she won $15,000 on "Password."
As for Greg, he's still reliving the answers and questions that he feels now he should have known.
His friends tease him for saying Peru has the South American capital city closest to the equator. It's Ecuador.
It was that Double Jeopardy question that knocked him to zero in the final minutes. "I over-thought it," Peterson said.
Of course, he quickly rebounded with questions like, "What is a didgeridoo?"