Just old enough to get a driver's license, Jon Clark, 16, of Bemidji recently learned that he won a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe in the Pepsi Free Ride contest.
The Bemidji High School sophomore, who opted to take a $42,000 cash prize rather than keep the vehicle, has had quite the lucky streak.
A few months ago, he won an Xbox 360 game system in a different Pepsi contest. Then, he won $20 cash for gas in the Pepsi Free Ride contest.
But it was in mid-February when the teen-ager received a letter notifying him that the code he had entered online from the cap of his pop bottle was the winner of a Chevrolet Tahoe. The Pepsi Free Ride contest is giving away a customized 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe to one winner every day.
"It was just nuts," Clark said. "It was awesome."
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Though he didn't keep the vehicle, Clark decided to surprise his mother, Jean, by buying her a used Chevrolet Tahoe with part of his prize money.
When his lucky streak began last fall with his Xbox 360 win, Clark's mother joked that he should win the Chevrolet Tahoe in the new contest so she could replace her old vehicle.
And then one day in February, a FedEx truck pulled up to the Clark residence to deliver an envelope addressed to the boy.
"I wondered, 'What did he win?'" Jean said.
She brought the unopened envelope with her when she picked Clark up from school that afternoon. Inside, the teen-ager found a letter notifying him of his grand prize win.
"We just couldn't believe it," Jean Clark said.
After deciding to take the cash instead of the vehicle, Jon Clark began planning with his father, Dave, and a Walker car dealer, to buy a vehicle for his mother.
"They went behind my back and secretly got this Tahoe for me," the mother said.
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Once he got his check, Clark and his parents drove to the dealership where the shiny white vehicle was parked in the lot with the engine running. He said he asked his mother if she liked it and told her it was hers.
"That's a pretty cool kid, I think," she said.
Besides buying a vehicle for his mother, Clark bought himself a laptop computer and plans to buy his 13-year-old sister, Laura, a new snowboard. And, he added, he plans to save some of the money for college.
Since Clark's stroke of luck, many people have told his family that they plan to start entering the contest codes on the caps of their pop bottles rather than throw the caps away.
"People say, 'Somebody actually wins," Jean Clark said. "It does actually happen. We were just shocked."
