3 Utahns win 'Oprah' contest

Work hard, write well, meet Oprah Winfrey, win $10,000.

That's what's happened to three Utah teens, among 50 nationwide selected as winners of Oprah Winfrey's premiere National High School Essay Contest on Elie Wiesel's memoir, "Night," about surviving the Holocaust.

West High junior Sophie Jin, Alta High junior Conner McKinnon and East senior Moana Uluave are among "The Fifty Young People Oprah Wants You to Meet," the title of the "Oprah Winfrey Show" episode, part of a two-day package — Wednesday's show features Winfrey and Wiesel touring Auschwitz. "Oprah" airs daily at 4 p.m. on ABC Channel 4.

The winning students are marveling about their time in the studio, feet away from America's top daytime diva.

"The whole thing was surreal," Jin said. "It still hasn't actually hit me in that we were on the 'Oprah' show."

Oprah's premiere National High School Essay Contest invited students to write, in 1,000 words or less, why the January Oprah's Book Club selection "Night," which Oprah called "mandatory reading for every human being on the planet," is relevant today.

Essays were judged on creativity, originality, eloquence of writing style, structure and relevance. Fifty winners were selected by a panel of experts including professors, children of Holocaust survivors and the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Winners received a trip to Chicago for an "Oprah Winfrey Show" taping. Each also was photographed with Winfrey and Wiesel.

Winning writers bring with them unique life experiences, the students said. The night before taping, McKinnon said the winners' circle included Rwanda refugees and homeless and abused teens.

"It's amazing how optimistic (a victim of abuse) was," McKinnon said. "I wrote about a lot of the things the other 50 kids experienced."

Wiesel also spoke about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps.

"We all had makeup on for the show and we all started crying with all this makeup on," Jin said.

The students also were presented with corporate-sponsored $5,000 scholarships — a figure Winfrey announced she would match.

"I screamed like a girl," quipped McKinnon, who plans to study humanities at Brigham Young University — and hopefully, abroad.

Uluave plans to use the money to begin studies at the University of Utah this summer, before her Bill & Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship, good for all higher education expenses for up to 10 years, kicks in.

"All the hard work paid off," Uluave said.

E-MAIL: jtcook@desnews.com; terickson@desnews.com