A Jersey City cop won the 40th season of Survivor — and has reportedly taken home the largest prize in reality show history.
Tony Vlachos, 46, bested five challengers — including two others from New Jersey: Michele Fitzgerald, 29, of Freehold and Natalie Anderson, 34, of Edgewater — in Wednesday’s episode of Survivor: Winners at War.
Vlachos won $2 million and became only the second two-time winner of the show, according to Entertainment Tonight.
“It opened up my eyes to see how [important] financial security is. Anything can happen. Right now we’re going through people losing their jobs,” Tony told ET. “The first million that I won with Survivor, I invested in a lot of properties … the best thing to do is to pay off those mortgages and be secure.”
Vlachos is a fan favorite villain from Survivor: Cagayan. He became infamous for using any means to get to the top by betraying all his alliances.
Fitzgerald, a travel advisor from Freehold and winner of Kaôh Rōng, managed to form the greatest number of alliances in the season and gained a considerable advantage over all of the other players.
Hailing from Edgewater, Anderson competed against her twin sister Nadiya. While Nadiya was one of the first people to get eliminated from the show, Natalie managed to adapt to the ever-changing alliances and eventually win.
In the run-up to the finale, which aired Wednesday, there was a lot of excitement that three of the final contestants all hailed from the same state.
The official New Jersey twitter account even tweeted “BIG STATE ENERGY” along with a photo of each contestant.
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