Quiz Show Win Earns Student $1 Million

Harvard Law School student Rahim R. 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 yesterday, 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," he said.

Anything for himself?

"I'm going to take a vacation to Europe," he added.

"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 B. Dellaquila, a first-year student, had seen the episode.

"She wanted me to see if I knew who he was," she said.

Katherine T.S. Chandler, who lives next to the apartment of Oberholtzer's girlfriend, said she heard about the big win through classmates.

The professor of one of Oberholtzer's courses allowed him to miss a class on the condition that he explain how was able to get on the show and succeed, Chandler said. She said she knew about his initial win of $100,000, but she had no idea that he had won nearly ten times that amount.

"He didn't come up to me and say it," Chandler said. "He's pretty modest about it."

Oberholtzer says his classmates have taken his win in stride.

"Most of my friends were supportive. Some of my marginal acquaintances were jealous," he said.

But the news came as a surprise to everyone. Despite the fact that he knew about his million-dollar win for almost two weeks, Oberholtzer said he did not tell anyone--not even his parents.

"I wanted everybody that watched the show to have the same sense of nervousness and excitement and the same degree of tension that comes with each question," he said. "It's not as much fun when you know the final answer."

McKee Colsman, a second-year law student, said he was familiar with Oberholtzer because he knows people who work for Stutman, Treister and Gatt, a law firm in Los Angeles which recently gave the winner a job offer.

When told of Oberholtzer's recent earnings, Colsman remarked, "Someone better tell Stutman."

Chandler and others said they knew what they would do if they won that much money.

"What a sensible idea [to appear on the show]--bloody hell," Chandler said. "I would presume he's leaving the law school now."

"Twenty One" is a remake of a 1950s game show that was mired in scandal. It became the focus of the popular 1994 movie, Quiz Show, starring Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro.