Local prize winner will hang with Taylor Swift, One Direction this weekend

Kelli Pankratz is a 26-year-old speech-language pathologist from Valley Center.

But this weekend, she’ll be treated like the A-list celebrities who will be taking the stage at the two-day iHeart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas – stars including Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Eric Church, Coldplay, Usher, One Direction and Ed Sheeran. (And she’ll likely meet some of them, too.)

Pankratz is the grand prize winner in a national iHeart Radio Music Festival contest that drew millions of entries, organizers said. Her prize package is rather elaborate, too. It allows her to take three friends (she’s already chosen them, sorry) on a private jet from Wichita to Las Vegas, where they’ll stay in a Sky Loft at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino.

Pankratz’s picture will be on a digital billboard in Las Vegas during the festival, and she’ll have a private car and driver, a personal photographer, a wardrobe stylist for the night, hair and makeup at the MGM spa and a private dressing room at the show.

She and her friends also will get a behind-the-scenes tour, where they’re likely to run into many of the festival’s performers, and Pankratz will get to walk the red carpet and go on stage with host Ryan Seacrest to introduce one of the acts. She and her friends also are invited to attend all the festival parties.

They leave Thursday.

“It’s been kind of a crazy month,” Pankratz said Tuesday.

Pankratz said she was waiting in the drive-through at KFC when she heard a radio ad for the contest, which instructed hopeful winners to send a text message to a certain number. On a whim, Pankratz did, and about an hour later, she found out she’d won the prize that local radion station Channel 963, 96.3-FM, was giving away. It included plane tickets, hotel and tickets to the festival. Pankratz, a longtime music fan, was overjoyed with that prize.

Then, this weekend, the radio station invited her to come on air to talk about it. While she was live, the disc jockeys told her she was the sole winner of the nationwide grand prize, which came with all the extra perks.

“Initially I was just in shock,” she said. “I was kind of just processing it all, and I was like, ‘OK. Act excited.’ Maybe an hour later, it hit me, and I started to get super excited.”

Pankratz is getting married in five weeks, and she and her fiance, Doug Doolen are moving to Austin as soon as the wedding is over. The timing of the prize makes it all even more crazy, she said.

At first, Doolen didn’t believe it was all real.

“He was like, ‘It’s probably a joke or a scam,’” she said. “But then he started hearing me on the radio, and he started believing it.”

Doolen gets to go with Pankratz, and she chose two of her closest girlfriends – Angie Haug and Karissa McGinty – to go as well.

The girls are preparing for the trip by shopping for new clothes and getting their nails done.

“We’re just trying to look somewhat glamorous,” Pankratz said with a laugh.

This story was originally published September 16, 2014 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Local prize winner will hang with Taylor Swift, One Direction this weekend."