Aug 13, 2007 12:11 PM

She survives tribal travails to (almost) win

Little did Cassandra Rigmaiden-Franklin know that when she showed up for traffic school last September at Santa Monica's Doubletree Hotel, she would soon be whisked away to experience the adventure of a lifetime.

Casting director Lynn Spillman was prowling the halls of the hotel, looking for potential contestants for a reality show, when she ran into Rigmaiden-Franklin, management services officer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Would you like to be on 'Survivor'?" Spillman asked. Rigmaiden-Franklin, who had never seen the show, thought she was joking. "No thanks," she said, laughing.

But encouraged by another traffic school student, Rigmaiden-Franklin called her husband, Clif Franklin, during a break to hear what he thought. He was equally enthusiastic, and before she knew it, she had signed up for the show. Ironically, the scariest part of her adventure, Rigmaiden-Franklin admitted, was asking her boss, department chair William Yeh, for two months off to compete on the show. But he and other UCLA colleagues proved extremely supportive, even though she was forbidden to reveal to most of them what the show was or where she would be going.

The location turned out to be the beautiful but remote Fijian island of Saba. There, she endured 39 tortuous days with 18 other contestants, with little food, water or shelter. There was a series of arduous reward/immunity challenges and plenty of scheming — a dramatic combination that's made CBS's "Survivor" a steady hit.

It hardly seemed the place for the gentle, soft-spoken Rigmaiden-Franklin, but she managed to avoid most of the messy situations by making wise alliances and staying "under the radar." Still, she said, the first several days were miserable, as she and two other members of her tribe, Moto, were nearly voted off.

"We didn't spend much time strategizing in the first half of the game because we knew our fate," she said, laughing. "Our only strategy was for Moto to keep winning challenges and to stay alive until we got closer to the merge (with Ravu, the other tribe). It wasn't until the teams switched up and I joined an alliance with [fellow contestants] Yau-Man and Earl that I started feeling like, 'OK, now I can start playing the game.' "

And play she did. When the final results were broadcast live on May 13 from New York City, Rigmaiden-Franklin discovered that she had tied for second place, winning $100,000. She put most of her winnings in the bank but also gave a large portion to her church, the McCoy Memorial Baptist Church, to be used for youth scholarships.

"The only goal I had was for my 8-year-old niece," Rigmaiden-Franklin said, smiling. "She said, 'Auntie, it doesn't really matter how well you do in the game. Just don't be the first one voted off.' "So she was thrilled!"

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