Milwaukee native and Rufus King High grad nails James Bond question to win big on 'Jeopardy!'

One of Gilbert Collins' closest friends growing up in Milwaukee was a big James Bond fan.

So in a way, Collins' buddy earned the five-time "Jeopardy!" champion a cool 16 grand on the popular TV quiz show. 

On Tuesday, Collins, a 1992 Rufus King High School grad, topped his fellow contestants by wagering $16,001 of his $16,800 in earnings on the final "Jeopardy!" category of "Novels of the 1960s" with the correct answer, Ian Fleming's book "You Only Live Twice."

For those who missed the episode, the question was: The line “once when you are born & once when you look death in the face” follows the title of this 1964 novel and 1967 film.

With Tuesday's victory, Collins earned $84,201 in five days. He's an administrator at Princeton University where he's associate director for the Center for Health and Wellbeing at the Woodrow Wilson School. 

Collins credits teachers Jim Kroll and Connie Wood, who coached Rufus King quiz bowl and academic decathlon teams, for helping him become a successful person and a winning "Jeopardy!" contestant.

"For these coaches, a lot of the things I learned then I still remember now. They were things I picked up under their guidance," Collins said in a phone interview Tuesday.

"For many people on 'Jeopardy!', it's not that they study for the show. The questions are so different and they can ask you anything. The people on 'Jeopardy!' are just naturally curious and they retain that information," Collins said. "The things I studied with Dr. Kroll and Miss Wood I retained for a long time."

The Harvard and Princeton grad was born in Germany, moved to Milwaukee as a baby and attended Milwaukee German Immersion School, Morse Middle School and Rufus King. Both his parents, Harry and Joyce Collins, worked for Milwaukee Public Schools, his father as a teacher and his mother as a social worker.

Collins, who speaks French, German, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, earned a bachelor's degree in government at Harvard and a master's in international development at Princeton. He spent eight years as the U.S. Peace Corps country director in Namibia and associate director in Botswana, focusing on HIV/AIDS interventions and other activities.

He watched "Jeopardy!" growing up in Milwaukee and several years ago took an online test seeking contestants. He didn't hear back so he waited a few years before taking another test and was invited to in-person tryouts in New York, where he took another test, participated in a mock round and did a filmed interview. Six months later he got the call to go to California to appear on the show.

Collins promised his two sons, 8 and 9, that he would give them 1% of his Jeopardy! winnings, figuring that if he finished second ($2,000) or third ($1,000) it would mean $20 or $10. 

Collins generally breezes through questions on sports, history, literature and geography and hoped he would not see categories on country music or current pop music. The keys to being a good "Jeopardy!" contestant, he said, are being able to quickly recall information and having the resilience to move on after answering wrongly and losing money.

Despite his success, there were a few questions he got wrong that continue to gnaw at him. Like answering Kevin Durant instead of Steph Curry on a question that asked who was the two-time NBA league MVP that led the Golden State Warriors to two titles.

"I am an enormous fan of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. I completely overthought that question," Collins said. "That answer gave me a lot of grief from my friends who are sports fans."