Every summer The Price Is Right honors first responders in a special July 4th episode. This year’s show features first responders who battled the California fires earlier this year.
TV Insider talked with Jonith Johnson Jr., a helicopter pilot for the Harley City Fire Department, who helped put out the fires and appeared on the special edition of the game show.
Johnson has been with the department for 20 years, after getting hired at the age of 19. He started off as a firefighter and then worked in the urban circuit rescue unit, but his dream was always aviation. Johnson took classes, got his pilot’s license, and took the test 11 years into his job. He passed the test and was promoted to fire helicopter pilot one. The game show contestant then took a five-year training course to become a full-fledged pilot with the LA Fire Department. He currently flies the main helicopter, the AW 139.
On The Price Is Right, Johnson played two games to try and win awesome prizes.
Read on to find out what Johnson had to say about appearing on The Price Is Right, plus how he was chosen to speak at the Oscars with other first responders earlier this year, and more.
Jonith Johnson Jr.
TV Insider: Since the episode you were on was all first responders, and The Price Is Right does that every year, did you have to audition, or did they ask you to come on the game show?
Jonith Johnson Jr.: So I saw a flyer that The Price Is Right was doing a first responder episode. So I thought it would be fun to try to get an opportunity to go on it. I grew up watching The Price Is Right, and I had a couple of my coworkers come with me. I was lucky enough to get picked to go on the show. It was quite shocking. So that was a really cool experience being able to do that.
Was it an all-day thing? And why do you think that they specifically picked you?
When we first got there, it was a long guest process to get registered, fill out paperwork, then you had to go through an interview. And there was a lot of first responders in there interviewing, so I wasn’t quite sure if they’re going to pick me or not. I was just happy to be kind of there and be able to have that experience. So it took most of the morning. They set me in a corner, so I for sure didn’t think they would pick me. I thought, ‘Oh my God, if they’re going to pick me, I probably have to be in the middle.’ So I was sitting in the corner and just sitting there, and I heard my name get called, and came right down. I think I was one of the first people to get called.”
Can you talk about your game, prizes, and your experience on the show?
So I started off with Bidder’s Row and some of the products that I was guessing. The first one was a foldable smartphone, and I’m an electronics guy. I’m into phones. I’m in electronics. I know what these prices are. And I think I was so nervous, I completely guessed something completely wrong. So I didn’t do well on Bidder’s Row initially. So, long story short, by my final chance to make it past Bidder’s Row, the last vote, everyone put their guesses in, and I had a feeling that they’re all over. So I guess one dollar, and that got me up [on stage] surprisingly. I guessed the dollar at the very last one.
I got Higher or Lower, which I was hoping for, because I feel pretty good about that game. So I ended up making it past Higher or Lower, and the prize was an Alaskan cruise. It was a one-week Alaskan Cruise, which seemed very cool. I just got into photography as a hobby. So I have a brand new camera and all this equipment. So, I really wanted to win that cruise, and I ended up winning it.
So the bonus was for an extra for the cash equivalent of the cruise, if I can guess which shell at the ball underneath it on Shell Game. If I guess that, I would get the equivalent in cash, which is around $20,000, and luckily i guessed right and won that. So I got up and got to fulfill my childhood dream of spinning the wheel. The guy I was competing with spun a 50. I was hoping he was going to stay, but he didn’t, and so he ended up spinning a 45 after that. So I had to beat a 95, so the odds were stacked against me. So I end up going and spun under a 95. That was the good end of my run on that very, very cool experience. I’m very happy I was able to do it.
What was it like getting to be in the room with other first responders, where you just all get to have fun and let loose, instead of being in intense situations together?
It was a nice break. I’ve been working a lot. I think during the fires, I worked two weeks straight. I wasn’t flying two weeks straight, but we have a pretty we have a set basically maximum time we can fly. So during the initial attack, we’ll fly for six hours, and then we’ll either have a six to eight-hour break, and then we’ll fly. We’ll do four-hour shifts after that. So during the fires, the helicopters stay running as much as we can, and we just swap out the pilots. But I’m physically there at work, so it’s a long time away from family, and this was a nice little break to kind of relax a little and have some fun. Even some of my co-workers I haven’t seen in a while.
Can you talk about your experience with Drew Carey? What was he like? Did he say anything to you that stuck out?
Drew Carey– Just he was a funny guy, I mean, very, very cool personality, and seemed very relatable. You can tell he loves his job, and I can appreciate that. So that was a cool experience doing that. He kind of just talked about his experience working with The Price Is Right and things like that.
Would you want to do any other game shows besides The Price Is Right?
Yes, I actually do. Funny enough, I got invited to do a couple of other game shows. The issue came up when I did the interview with them, and the last question they asked me was, ‘Was I on any other game shows?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I just was on The Price Is Right.’ I interviewed with them, but because of that, they said I wasn’t eligible to be on any shows for, I think, a year.
Oh yeah. The cool thing is, I randomly got picked to speak at the Oscars, so I got to experience that. Yeah, that was a surreal experience, doing that, being on that stage and speaking. I was very nervous. You know, they had us telling jokes.
What would you think was more nerve-wracking? The Price Is Right, or giving a speech at the Oscars?
I think the Oscars were pretty nerve-wracking because on The Price Is Right you have the audience, but then you’re speaking into a camera. So it doesn’t feel like millions of people are watching, but they are. But, at the Oscars, you’re on the stage with an audience, and you have all these famous people that you only see on TV, staring right at you, and hoping I don’t forget my line, get nervous, and freeze up. So that was pretty nerve-wracking.
What was your reaction when you were told that you were going to be honored at the Oscars with other first responders?
Courtesy of Jonith Johnson Jr.
My first reaction was, I almost didn’t want to go because I wasn’t the only person fighting the fire. So I didn’t want to go at first. My first thought was, ‘Hey, what about the other guys?’ And there were a lot of people who did a lot of good work in it, and I was basically told, there’s one slot for me, and I could take it or leave. And I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to take it.’ But, it was one of those things that they couldn’t bring everyone up, but I had the opportunity to represent all the men and women of the LA Fire Department there. We had other guys up there, too. We had three days of rehearsals.
What was going through your head when you were when you saw how California was destroyed through the fires, and when you had to put the fires out?
The first thing was, I was amazed at the pure devastation. I mean, I fought a lot of fires in my time with the Los Angeles Fire Department, and I’ve never seen as much fire and devastation as that. And so, we tried to do the best we could. And you can only do so much. We did the best we could with what we had, and not the aircraft flying with as much detail. And my heart just went out to all the families that lost everything. And it was tough to see. But we just kind of had to stay focused. We had a job to do. There are a lot of hazards, especially, I think, the first night I was flying at night, in night vision goggles. If you can imagine flying through toilet paper rolls with the screen on the front. There’s a lot of things to look out for when you’re fighting fire, and outside the conditions, visibility is very low. I feel like the men and women did a good job, and we did the best we could.
The Price Is Right, Season 54, this fall, CBS
