Last summer, Tristiaña Hinton’s grandmother fell and broke her leg.
While she was in rehab, Hinton spent a lot of time with her, most of it, she said, was watching game shows. As Hinton participated from home when the shows were on, her grandmother remarked how talented she was.
“She was like, ‘Wow, you’re really good at this. You should go on. You would win,’” Hinton told WTOP.
So, without telling anyone, Hinton applied to be a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune.” She went through the interview process. By the time she got a callback, her grandmother, nicknamed Yams, had gotten sick and died.
As Hinton returned home from the funeral, around 2 a.m., she checked her email and learned that she’d been selected to be a contestant.
Wearing a black blazer with her “Wheel of Fortune” name tag, Hinton shared that story with a room filled with family and friends at Alfreda in Northwest D.C. on Monday night.
After months of wondering about her performance, they watched her success on the restaurant’s lone television.
“This has been a really great way to honor my grandmother,” Hinton said. “And she was right.”
Shortly after receiving the email, Hinton excitedly called her mom to share the news. The show taped in early June, she said, on a day that started in a “dingy parking lot at 7 a.m.”
She was “super, super nervous” going into every episode they taped, she said, and as the group watched the episode Monday, they cheered as she successfully guessed letters in phrases such as “Pumpkin Spice Latte” and “Head Coach.”
But she didn’t realize she’d won until Ryan Seacrest told another player she had a great game and thanked her for playing.
Seacrest started tapping her shoulder, but Hinton had a delayed reaction because, “All I’m saying is ‘Oh, my God, I did it.’ She was right — talking about my grandmother,” she said.
Her mom, Stephanie Hinton, got to watch from the studio, and described the experience as “so much fun.”
“I had no idea what to expect,” Stephanie Hinton said. “Ryan Seacrest was absolutely a doll. Vanna (White) is such a sweetheart. They were so super nice.”
Once it became clear that Hinton had won Monday’s episode, she removed the blazer to display the back of her pink shirt.
In “Wheel of Fortune” style block letters, it said, “Yams was right!”
