In the summer of 2011, Jeanie and I went to San Francisco for a couple of nights. I was hosting the National Geographic World Championship at Google headquarters, and instead of me scooting up there and coming home immediately afterward, we figured we’d make a little vacation out of it.
We stayed at a very nice hotel, and we went to bed early so we could wake up first thing and do some sightseeing before I had to head to the job. I’m a light sleeper, and around 2:30 a.m. something roused me. I saw a figure walking past the foot of the bed. At first, I thought maybe I was dreaming. Then I thought it might be Jean. But I looked over and Jean was sound asleep next to me.
Hold on a minute, I thought. If Jean is here, then who is that?
I jumped up and put on a pair of shorts. As I did, I noticed my wallet and bracelet were missing from the dresser top where I’d put them. I hurried into the hall and saw a woman duck into the ice-machine room. I waited just outside, and when she emerged I confronted her.
“What were you doing in my hotel room?” I asked.
“I wasn’t in your hotel room,” she said.
“Then what are you doing up here?”
“I was visiting friends,” she said.
“At two thirty in the morning? Let me call security.”
At that, she took off running, and I took off after her. I got about twenty feet and just like that—snap. I dropped to the ground. A torn Achilles tendon. I knew it immediately.
I managed to get up and limp over to a phone by the elevators to call security. I described the woman, and they quickly apprehended her. She was arrested and eventually charged with felony first-degree burglary. Because she already had several convictions for hotel burglary, she could have faced a sentence of twenty-five years to life under California’s three-strikes law. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
I still went through with my hosting duties that day, though I had to be rolled into the auditorium in a wheelchair and use crutches to hobble around. I joked to the audience, “You’re going to be tempted to blurt out responses. If you do, I will have to chase you out. Ha-ha.”
There was a lot of news coverage of the event. The media made a big deal out of me sleeping in the buff. Matt Lauer even mentioned it on the Today show, saying, “I think we are learning a bit more than we want to know about Trebek’s sleeping habits.” But actually, I had a T-shirt on.