Girl Wins Contest With Fake Essay

[trashtalkr]

Girl Lies In Essay To Win Hannah Montana Tickets

An essay that won a 6-year-old girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: "My daddy died this year in Iraq."

While gripping, it wasn't true -- and now the girl may lose her tickets after her mom acknowledged to contest organizers it was all a lie.

The sponsor of the contest was Club Libby Lu, a Chicago-based store that sells clothes, accessories and games intended for young girls.

The saga began Friday with company officials surprising the girl at a Club Libby Lu at a mall in suburban Garland, northeast of Dallas. The girl won a makeover that included a blonde Hannah Montana wig, as well as the grand prize: airfare for four to Albany, New York, and four tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert on January 9.

The mother had told company officials that the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said.

"We did the essay and that's what we did to win," Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. "We did whatever we could do to win."

She had identified the soldier as Sgt. Jonathon Menjivar, but the Department of Defense has no record of anyone with that name dying in Iraq. Caulfield said the mother has admitted to the deception.

"We regret that the original intent of the contest, which was to make a little girl's holiday extra special, has not been realized in the way we anticipated," said Mary Drolet, the CEO of Club Libby Lu.

Drolet said the company is reviewing the matter, and is considering taking away the girl's tickets.

Source: CNN

Wow....that mom sure is starting young with the bad parental advice

[AYHJA]

I mean, it was just an essay...LoL...It was fucked, yes, but did the rules specify that the shit had to be true..?

[Dubbler2002]

That's so f*cked up. That girls mother would have her daughter do something like that.
What the hell is she going to let her do when she grows up.
This is almost as bad as that mother harassing a 13 year old girl until she committed suicide.
What's wrong with these stupid parents.
No wonder the kids are so screwed up.

[raum]

what's worse is the mother has those tacky "drawn-on" eyebrows. :P

I say make the mother do community service in a veterans hospital or in the local Legion of honor. She doesn't look like she meant harm, and I know parents and children often misunderstand her. I know many people who think someone joined the military, but the story got screwed up, not saying that was the case. Just saying no harm was done, and no foul to any but this woman's family. She seems like a single mother, so fining is useless and ultimately detrimental. Maybe the girl's father is dead from violence, or just a deadbeat, and the mom was trying to make the little girl feel like he was a hero. Happens alot more in inner city and in the south than you may think. to many benign maybes to "make her pay"!

Make her go spend some time with people who were willing to fight and die for her right to cheat in a contest. She seems to have need perspective on the sacrifice they make.

That being said, I wonder if people with absent fathers are more tolerant of this in general. No vets I know want this woman burned. They think the girl should get the tix (I mean c'mon!), and the mom should have to work at a Veteran Center. (at min wage) the number of hours it would have taken to buy them. I think that is the most fair suggestion i have heard.