Los Altos native takes a gamble on national TV reality show

By Tim Seyfert and Leslie Tang, Town Crier Staff Writers

For 17 years, longtime Los Altos resident John Brodie was one of pro football’s top quarterbacks, lending his golden arm to a triumphant career with the San Francisco 49ers from 1957 to 1973.

Three decades later, his daughter showed her family and everyone else watching the July 7 finale of NBC’s “For Love or Money” that her football hero father wasn’t the only one who had game.

To some TV viewers, Erin Brodie, 30, might be one of the most daring (or perhaps foolish) gamblers in recent history.

As a contestant on the reality series, which is a cross between “Joe Millionaire” and “The Bachelor,” the Los Altos native beat out 15 other women when bachelor Rob Campos chose her as his potential mate. Brodie then had a choice of picking either Campos, a Dallas defense attorney with a reserved personality, or $1 million. She ultimately took the money. But she didn’t walk away just then.

NBC producers later offered Brodie another choice: to keep the $1 million she had already won or return the check and play for double or nothing in “For Love or Money 2.” To the shock of many viewers, Brodie tossed her $1 million prize check into a fireplace during the first show’s finale in order to gamble her fortune on the sequel, which airs at 9 p.m. Mondays.

“They only gave me 24 hours to think about it,” Brodie said during a recent phone interview. “It’s like you’re at a roulette table and you have to decide right then and there where you’re going to throw your money down. I just went for it.”

The finale of the first series was that week’s most watched television program, with 12.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Brodie is the second woman in television history to lead a multi-episode reality dating show. The first was Trista Rehn on “The Bachelorette,” which aired on ABC.

This time around, 15 men are wooing Brodie, and she gets to pick one of them as a possible partner. The chosen stud will get the same choice Brodie had: romance or $1 million, but not both. If he opts to stay with her over the seven-figure payday, Brodie will win $2 million. If he takes the money, Brodie walks away empty-handed.

Despite reservations from her family and friends, Brodie let it all ride for a chance to double her prize.

“I don’t know what was going through my head,” Brodie said. “My sister thought I was crazy. She said, ‘No guy is going to pick you over $1 million.’ But I just felt I had to take that chance.”

“At first, I wasn’t sure if she had made the right choice,” said Sue Brodie, Erin’s mother. “Then I remembered she was a Brodie, and I thought, ‘Go for the gamble.’ It’s such a Brodie thing to do.”

Raised in Los Altos and now based in San Francisco, Brodie attended both St. Francis and Los Altos high schools, before graduating from the latter in 1990. As a teen-ager, Brodie played varsity tennis for the Eagles, as well as swam and played soccer for local club teams. She was known by her friends as “someone who always did her own thing,” and according to childhood friend Christine Challas, wasn’t too far from the same person TV watchers see on their sets each week.

“She hasn’t changed,” said Challas, a Los Altos resident and Brodie’s best friend since the second grade. “For the most part, the show captured her pretty accurately. Intelligent, well-rounded, witty and fun — that’s Erin.”

After high school, Brodie continued her education at the University of Southern California, where she majored in communications and television production.

Having lived her whole life in the shadow of a celebrity family, Brodie said she never had any intention of becoming famous in her own right, let alone being on a reality show. That all changed one day while she was having lunch outside her office in San Francisco, where she worked as a software manager.

“They were having the auditions next door, and one of my friends dared me to go upstairs and try out, so I just did it out of fun,” Brodie said.

The interview took only a few minutes, but that was apparently enough time for NBC producers to make up their minds. They called Brodie back for a follow-up interview the next day.

“That’s when they told me they wanted me for the show and that I had to be ready in two days,” Brodie said. “It all happened so fast.”

The next week, Brodie was on the show. Once there, she knew that the winner would have to pick between $1 million and Campos. What she — along with the other contestants — didn’t know was that Campos would get the $1 million if the woman he chose picked him over the money.

When she ultimately took the cash over Campos, Brodie said it was a decision motivated more by honesty than by greed.

“I went into this whole thing simply for the experience,” Brodie said. “I wasn’t looking for love or money. I felt that it would’ve been dishonest to pick him, because I didn’t see potential for the two of us. It was a hard choice because I also didn’t want to send out the message that money is more important than love.”

Still, Brodie’s decision to go for broke on “For Love or Money 2″ has already cost her. In order to tape the eight-episode show, she was forced to give up a job that she loved.

“They told me that if I did the second series, I would lose my job,” said Brodie, who’d held her manager’s position at Advent Software Inc. for four years.

“I had to be away for four weeks, and when you combine that with the time I had already taken off for the first (series), they didn’t think that set a very good example, so I had to quit,” she said. “It was a great job, but I wanted to do the show.”

Challas agreed that Brodie made the right choice by opting to be on the second show. “Anyone that knows her knows that any guy would be foolish to take any amount of money over the chance to be with her,” she said.

Brodie lived up to her reputation in the first episode, enchanting the 15 bachelors at first sight. “I don’t think you could put a price tag on Erin, she’s priceless,” one of the hopeful suitors said.

Brodie wouldn’t reveal the outcome of “For Love or Money 2″ (the show was taped in advance), but whatever does end up happening, Brodie said she’s already been paid-in-full in some respect.

“The biggest thing I took away from this was a chance to change my path in life,” she said.

As of last week, Brodie was making plans to move to Los Angeles permanently, to “explore opportunities in the entertainment field.”

“I’ve had the same attitude from the beginning of this experience as I do now: To take things as they come and to have fun,” Brodie said. “And being a part of the show has allowed me to continue doing that.”

“For Love or Money 2″ airs at 9 p.m. Mondays on NBC.