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Medford man isn't quite a millionaire But Kummer takes home $125,000 from game show By JESSICA SMITH Here's the final answer to a question that's lingered since Sunday night -- Steve Kummer's not a millionaire. But the 43-year-old Medford man, the first local contestant to brave Regis Philbin and the "hot seat," walked away from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" with $125,000. He won the cash after successfully answering 12 trivia questions and could have doubled his money if he had known that Kublai Khan was Genghis Khan's grandson. But a wrong answer would have cost Kummer nearly 75 percent of his winnings. "That scared me enough I didn't want to take the chance -- $93,000 is too much to lose," Kummer said of his decision to leave the game. "So I thought I'd take my $125,000 and be happy about it." There are no definite plans for the money, but a trip to Hawaii comes before Kummer and his wife, Annie, decide whether they'll pay the mortgage on their Medford home or invest the winnings. "We haven't quite decided yet what we'll do with the money, but we have a stockbroker in town and we're discussing it," Kummer said. Kummer had tried for six months to land a spot on the popular trivia show, and in Sunday's episode he earned the chance to chase the million-dollar prize. He answered eight questions before seeking help with two questions that put him at the $32,000 mark at the close of the show that aired Sunday. He was guaranteed to take home at least that much even if he muffed the next question. To win the top prize, contestants must correctly answer 15 multiple-choice questions. As the show began Tuesday, Kummer took a stab at a literature question to win $64,000. He said it's the subject he knows the least about, but that he had worked out a plan in case he was stumped. "The last two questions had B and C answers. I just decided I'd go with D for my final answer, and that's how much science went into it," he said. That was Kummer's last risk. After answering the $125,000 question correctly, by identifying Christine Keeler as a key figure in the Profumo scandal that rocked England, he decided to call it quits. "That was enough money to make a difference and I didn't want to chance it." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA