Who will be the next biggest loser?

By Lorraine Eaton

The Virginian-Pilot

If all goes as planned, life as Gayle Jordan has known it will be over.

It started Thursday night, when she was due to drive to the Norfolk airport and hug a West Coast woman she'd never met. On Saturday, the two women hope to start a new journey together.

The ladies have a lot to lose.

Jordan, 25, of Chesapeake, and Stefanie Henderson, 24, who lives in California, have been online weight-loss partners and friends since last year. Together, they want to shed nearly 200 pounds. They've tried pills. They've tried diets. Saturday they'll try for a spot on the sixth season of "The Biggest Loser."

"I want to change. I want to change 100 percent," said Jordan, a former Hickory High School athlete who has gained nearly 100 pounds in just four years. "I want my life back."

Saturday's open casting call for NBC's hugely popular reality show is expected to draw 2,000 or more plus-size people to the Suffolk Family YMCA, casting director Tad Patrick Frank said Tuesday in a phone interview from New York City. So many, in fact, that he's bringing an extra person for the interviews that are the first step of the casting call.

Season six is seeking pairs of potential losers - cousins, best friends, siblings, grandparents, former teammates, college classmates and others. The chosen ones will spend this summer at a ranch in California competing to get physically fit. The winner will earn $250,000, and the runner-up will take home $100,000.

Locals who believe the big time can make them smaller are picking partners, probing their pasts and pondering what questions the casting crew might lob their way.

Expect some personal discussions, Frank said. For example, a question in the online application asks about a most embarrassing moment.

That's an easy one for Mildred White, 44, of Chesapeake. Vacation. Last year. The Bahamas. Getting into a taxi, her denim capris split right down the back.

That and some health issues have her trying to lose 50 to 75 pounds. White plans to show up for the casting call early with her niece to be assured of an interview.

"Maybe this will motivate me," she said.

Candis Hill, 42, of Chesapeake wants to lose about 90 pounds. Her sister and partner, who lives in Georgia, wants to lose even more. Hill has tried endless diets and considered bypass surgery, but she would much rather do it "naturally." Recently she developed, and then ditched, a habit of walking every morning and eating several small meals each day.

"I was losing, but now I can't even figure out where I went wrong.

"I feel like if I went on the show, I could finally do it."

Hill and her sister plan to arrive at the Suffolk YMCA early, sporting matching sweats.

That's the right idea.

"Come dressed as a team," Frank advised, and bring a photo of yourself and your teammate. "A couple of women in New York came in chicken suits. I definitely called them back because of the creativity.... The people we picked are the ones with a good story and who looked like a team."

Ronald Botelho, 36, has a straightforward strategy: He'll impress with intensity and drive. The Virginia Beach resident and former high school athlete - football, track and field, wrestling and baseball - wants to drop about 120 pounds to get below 200 to start a new chapter in his life following his divorce.

"I can get hyped up, now. I can get into the zone. I've got that winning spirit in me."

Henderson and Jordan, the California-Chesapeake connection, won't just be showing up in jeans and a T-shirt, count on that. They've dubbed themselves the "Coast 2 Coast Losers" and have been honing their dream team concept for months. They joined the show's online "Million Pound Match-Up." Check' em out at www.coast2coastlosers.spaces.live.com.

Along the way, they've "become like long-lost sisters," Henderson said.

Good move.

"We want someone you can share this experience with, who has a profound importance in your life," Frank said. "Co-workers don't get picked unless they are best friends who happen to work at the same place."

Henderson, a traffic manager at a radio station, was a high school athlete but has always been heavy. She gained 60 pounds in the past year, her 5-foot-tall frame topping out at 248 pounds.

"I've always been the girl with the pretty face. Now it's gotten out of control. I've never been heavy in the face before."

Jordan, meanwhile, knows exactly what it's like to be "super athletic." She was the only female wrestler at Hickory High School, and ran cross-country and track. She joined the Army after she graduated from high school in 2001 but said a kidney stone operation caused her to be honorably discharged days before boot camp ended.

"That was my dream," said Jordan, who now works 12-hour shifts as a scale operator at the Southeastern Public Service Authority station in Norfolk. "It was my dream to be a military police officer. I was completely devastated."

Now, making it onto "The Biggest Loser" is her dream. However, she knows the odds: Only 10 to 12 teams of two, picked from casting calls held around the country, will make it on the show. In addition, not everyone who comes to a casting call makes it into an interview. The casting company promises that at least the first 500 pairs in line will be interviewed.

Pairs chosen from the interviews will be invited back to an undisclosed location for on-camera questioning Sunday through Wednesday. After that, 30 to 50 teams from across the country will be invited to the finals, which take place over six days in Los Angeles, just before the start of the season's taping beginning around June 1.

The first episodes likely will start airing in the fall.

"Even if we don't make the show, we will reach these goals," Jordan said. "We have an awesome support system online. It is so amazing that even if we don't make the show, having our story out there will help others, and it will help us, too."

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com