Arizona Woman Wins Roto-Rooter’s "Pimped Out John"

CINCINNATI - Much to the disappointment of tens of thousands of men who entered Roto-Rooter’s “Pimped out John” Sweepstakes for a chance to win the most tricked out toilet in history, a woman is claiming the prize.

Marcia Luhman, 55, of Oro Valley, Arizona, a suburb of Tucson, was notified that she’d won the $5000 toilet after the sweepstakes computer randomly drew her entry as the winner. Marcia is semi-retired and says she entered the sweepstakes because she thought her 25-year-old son would enjoy the prize. “I did it as a joke because he is a little crazy and I knew he would enjoy it,” said Luhman. Her son, Matthew Pechter, is a student in the digital arts program at Pima Community College, in addition to being, perhaps, the luckiest guy in America this week.

The “Pimped out John” is a Kohler® Cimarron™ toilet surrounded by a 20-inch flat panel TV, Gateway® laptop computer, Xbox 360™ game system, DVD player, Tivo® DVR, refrigerator with a beer tap and an iPod™ with stereo docking station that doubles as a toilet tissue holder. Marcia decided to keep the Gateway laptop computer for herself since hers has a bad hard drive. Everything else will go to her son.

When asked if she’d ever won anything before, Marcia replied, “When I was seven years old I won a goldfish at a school carnival at Thomas A. Edison Public School in Park Ridge, Illinois.”

Roto-Rooter created the one-of-a-kind “Pimped out John” as an exercise in hedonism because the average person spends one year, four months and five days on the toilet in a lifetime. Management at the plumbing and drain cleaning company felt that time spent on the john should be more productive, or at least entertaining. The toilet was featured on NBC’s Today Show and hundreds of newscasts and newspapers around the world after the sweepstakes kicked off on Thomas Crapper Day in January.