City dweller takes home top prize in wilderness competition ‘Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls’

SHARE City dweller takes home top prize in wilderness competition ‘Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls’

Andrew “Lucky” Larson and his daughter, Andrea “Louie” Larson, 24, of Chicago, were crowned the winners of NBC’s adventure reality-competition series “Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls.”

The father-daughter duo defeated the two remaining teams — Austin and James Vach and Chris Winter and Jeffrey Powell — in a soggy final challenge that took place amidst a downpour in a rainforest during Monday night’s finale. The pair took home $500,000 for their victory.

Lucky, 58, is a carpenter from Stillman Valley, near Rockford. A rugged outdoorsman, he raised his daughters on a goat dairy farm and taught them to follow in his footsteps. They learned how to hunt, trap, fish, skin an animal and survive and thrive in the outdoors — skills that no doubt came in handy for the show, which just finished its first season. (Ratings weren’t great, so who knows if there will be a second.)

Louie lives with her husband in Chicago and works as a volleyball coach.

The competition began with 10 teams (including another from Chicago: Vanessa Vazquez, 23, and Erica Franklin, 24), all trying to avoid weekly elimination and survive the elements and challenges in New Zealand.

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