Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider. (Twitter/ Jeopardy!)
Reigning Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider has once again made history as the first woman to ever surpass $1 million in earnings.
Schneider, the affable wiseacre and engineering manager from Dayton, Ohio, already has sufficient bragging rights from her nearly two-month-long streak on the syndicated game show.
She is already the highest-earning female contestant and the woman with the longest winning streak – as well the first openly trans contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions.
But on Friday (7 January), Schneider broke the $1 million mark in her 28th episode of Jeopardy!.
This makes her the fourth person in the show’s history to take home more than a million dollars in prize money. She collected $42,200 during her most recent episode, bringing her total tally to a thumping $1,019,001.
Schneider will get another chance to top up her earnings in Monday’s game.
“It feels amazing, it feels strange,” she said in a statement. “It’s not a sum of money I ever anticipated would be associated with my name.”
Amy Schneider joins the one million club after being ‘robbed at gunpoint’
Now Amy Schneider trails behind fellow record-breakers Ken Jennings with $2.5 million; James Holzhauer, $2.46 million and Matt Amodio, $1.52 million.
Schneider’s runaway wins have captured the attention of countless fans of one of America’s longest-running quiz shows.
But her sensational success has also drawn ugly comments from anti-trans kooks, many of whom she has classily shrugged off.
Her entering the Jeopardy! history books capped off a dispiriting week for Schneider, who had earlier been robbed at gunpoint, she claimed.
On Monday, she announced on Twitter that she had been robbed the day before.
“Hi all! So, first off: I’m fine. But I got robbed yesterday, lost my ID, credit cards and phone,” she wrote.
“I then couldn’t really sleep last night and have been dragging myself around all day trying to replace everything.”
The Oakland Police Department confirmed to The Washington Times that officers are investigating an armed robbery that took place Sunday afternoon.
Jeopardy! said in a statement to the outlet: “We were deeply saddened to hear about this incident and we reached out to Amy privately to offer our help in any capacity.”