"I still don't have words for it," Modesto Junior College student Lindsay Pearce said Tuesday about winning the $1,000 grand prize in the Gallo Center for the Arts' first Valley's Got Talent contest Saturday night.
"I was completely shocked that I, out of every wonderful performer that performed that night, won the grand prize," the 19-year-old added. "It's mind blowing."
Pearce, who's studying theater and music at the college, sang "Gimme Gimme" from the Broadway musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie."
As part of her prize, she will get to perform at the Gallo Center this season. Pearce previously starred as Laurey in MJC's 2009 staging of "Oklahoma!"
The $750 second prize went to Modesto ballroom dancers Rhett Grant and Tiffany Li, who perform as the California Ballroom Company. The $750 audience-choice award went to the New Hope Church Band of Modesto and Turlock.
Twenty-six acts competed in public shows Friday and Saturday in the packed 1,200-seat Rogers Theater, with the winners announced immediately after Saturday's performance.
The winners were chosen by celebrity judges Robert Ulrich, a Modesto native and Emmy Award nominee for casting the hit Fox TV show "Glee"; his wife, Kim Johnston Ulrich, a longtime actress on the soap opera "Passions"; Dan Day, The Bee's director of interactive media; Genevieve Hinson of Children's Hospital Central California; Tony Varni of Modesto's Seven-Up Bottling Co.; and the audience.
"We were blown away by all the talent on stage," Day said.
"I expected some first-rate singing, and we got that. But the range of the talent was awesome, everything from dancing to yo-yo maneuvers to the guy who did a mind-reading demo."
Bee staff writer Lisa Millegan Renner can be contacted at lrenner@modbee.com or 578-2313.
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