'04 Aggie Wins 'Hunted' TV Game Show

The premise of the CBS television game show "Hunted" is for teams of regular folks to act as fugitives and try to avoid being located by "highly skilled investigators using state-of-the-art tracking methods." Nine teams competed on the first season of the show, and two teams each won a $250,000 grand prize by avoiding capture for 28 days. Among the winners was Lee Wilson '04, a graduate of Texas A&M with a degree in English.

Lee says he never could have imagined his post-college journey would lead him to being an escape room business owner, and now a grand prize winner. “I’ve never been a fugitive before, but I do have experience buckling down and focusing on the task that’s in front of me,” he says.

Lee is a former student director of Impact Retreat, a student organization connecting incoming freshmen to local ministries. “The invaluable skill that I learned from student leadership is that I’m capable of applying myself and leading people to accomplish great things. It’s A&M that taught me that lesson for the very first time and I’ve put it into practice in countless different ways in my life.”

But Lee says the greatest thing he says he gained from his time at Texas A&M is his wife, Beth Wilson ’06. “She is my brilliant life partner, spouse and my business partner. She was my spy during the show, providing us with invaluable information to allow my team to win. I owe a special word of thanks to the Department of Communication for getting her ready for that."

Wilson owns an escape room business in Jackson, Tenn. "Every day, I have to be five steps ahead of everybody that plays my rooms," he told CBS before the show. "I think that sets me up well to be five steps ahead of the hunters."

On his bio page for the show, Wilson described himself as perceptive, unconventional, cunning and strategic. His partner for the show was his best friend, Hilmar Skagfield, an IT consultant from Tallahassee, Fla., who described himself as "the Robin to Lee's Batman."

While Hilmar is not an Aggie, the two met due to the Wilson family's commitment to the core value of selfless service. While working in student ministry at Union University, Lee met Hilmar, and when several university dorms were tragically destroyed by a tornado, Beth invited him to live with their family in their home in Jackson.

Lee and Hilmar were on the run for 28 days; their ability to avoid being captured resulted in a $250,000 grand prize. (Photo courtesy of Beck Media.)

Wilson also said he is a family man, and he told CBS that he wants to use his winnings to make up for lost time with his family. "The way I see it, I owe my wife and kids 28 days of my life: my wife Beth wants a week at the beach, my oldest kids both want to go to Disney. We will have to wait and see what the baby wants when he gets older."

"Entertainment Weekly" talked to all the winners — Wilson and Skagfield, plus married couple Stephen and English King — about how they managed to cover 100,000 square miles in 28 days without getting caught. You can read that interview at http://ew.com/tv/2017/03/02/hunted-winners-cbs-interview/.

CBS also interviewed them after the show; that story is at http://www.cbs.com/shows/hunted/news/1006744/lee-and-hilmar-reflect-on-their-hunted-victory/.