Cherilyn Cieryca wins Oscar contest

“Slumdog Millionaire” was the big winner in this year’s Oscars, but it was almost as big for Coeur d’Alene movie fan Cherilyn Cieryca.

Cieryca won this year’s Spokesman-Review Oscar Contest by correctly predicting winners in 21 of the 24 Academy Award categories.

“I watch a lot of movies, and I read about movies all the time,” she said. “And I watched all the other awards shows, so you kind of have a feel about how it’s gonna go.”

Cieryca missed only Foreign Language film, Sound Mixing and Documentary Short.

Denver resident Paul Jarnagin, who entered the contest online (as did all of the other winners), finished second by virtue of the tie-breaker.

Jarnagin and six other contest participants each guessed 20 right, but he was the only one to correctly predict that “Slumdog Millionaire” would lead all winners with eight Oscars.

Chad Heimbigner and Damon Delistraty of Spokane joined Dan Kaiser and Donald Lacky of Tacoma and Megan Albertus, a former Spokane resident (and three-time contest winner) now living in Los Angeles, in a tie for third place. All were one off the correct answer in the tie-breaker.

For her reward, Cieryca takes home $100 in movie passes. Jarnagin will receive $50 in movie passes, while the five third-place finishers each earned $25 in passes.