Harvard student wins $1 M on NBC game show

By Victoria C. Hallett

Harvard Crimson

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (U-WIRE) - Harvard Law School student Rahim Oberholtzer became the biggest game show winner in television history two weeks ago - but NBC forced him to keep his million-dollar fortune a secret until Wednesday, the show's air date.

Over the course of two episodes of the primetime quiz show "Twenty One," Oberholtzer amassed the record sum of $1,120,000.

"It's hard to think that's it's real until you actually see the check," Oberholtzer said.

Oberholtzer's record-breaking win prompted fanfare on the episode that aired last night.

"You are the game show king!" host Maury Povich told him, as blue and white balloons tumbled around him.

Oberholtzer, who is a third-year law student, defeated a series of competitors by answering multiple-choice questions - with subjects ranging from Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to the hit film Jerry Maguire - and expanded his winnings from $100,000 to his wallet-bursting total.

The hardest question, Oberholtzer said, concerned landmarks in Greenwich Village in New York.

"Since I had never been to Greenwich Village, it was difficult," he said.

Oberholtzer plans to spend his winnings on a variety of causes. "I'm going to use some of it to help out my family, some of it for paying off loans, some of it for a scholarship fund I want to set up. I'm going to take a vacation to Europe," he said.

"Twenty One," which airs weekly, is a structured as a race between two contestants to accumulate 21 points. Contestants play until they lose, meaning that prizes in excess of $1,000,000 are possible.

As he handed Oberholtzer stacks of cash, Povich asked the student what he would do next.

"I go back (to Harvard) tomorrow morning for a final exam," Oberholtzer said.

Already, Oberholtzer has become infamous among his fellow law students. A majority of those buried in their books last night at Langdell Library had heard word of the game show winnings. "It was all the rage (when we returned from winter break)," said Kristin Van Vleck, a third-year law student. "I knew he had won some hundreds of thousands of dollars. So yeah, you could say I'm jealous."

At the urging of her mother, Lisa Dellaquila, a first-year student, had seen the episode. "She wanted me to see if I knew who he was," she said.