Soft-spoken and extraordinarily polite, Mike Wallace from Fresno would have welcomed the minimum prize any Big Spin contestant receives, but his story and his luck gave him much more when he played Aces High on the California Lottery Big Spin show.
Wallace has a son, Alex, who is 10 years old. Alex has had two organ transplants and one of those, a kidney, has failed. So Alex is on dialysis, waiting for medical approval before another transplant can be considered. Wallace had won his way to the game show’s Aces High where he faced nine other contestants. Somehow, luck was with him. So were onlookers who had learned his story. Wallace then won his way to the big wheel where host Pat Finn asked what he hoped for. He replied, “Making my little boy’s dreams come true.” With that the proud father gave the wheel a spin and, in time, it stopped on $40,000. “This is wonderful,” Wallace said as he, his wife and daughter, who were in the audience, knew the prize would pay for a trip to Disneyworld when Alex can travel.