If Kate Pahls had stuck to her gut instinct, the Columbia Township grandmother may have won The Mole grand prize.

        But she didn't.

        “I had figured out who the "Mole' was as soon as I got there,” says Mrs. Pahls, who was the sixth person eliminated from ABC's adventure game show Tuesday. The winner, to be announced Feb. 28, is the player who knows the most about the “Mole,” a fellow contestant who sabotages their games.

Kate Pahls (CBS photo) | ZOOM |

        “Each day we were interviewed by the producers, and on the first day when the producer asked, "Who do you think the Mole is?' I said the name of this person and the producer flinched,” she says.

        During the next three weeks of The Mole games (called “tests”) for cash rewards in France and Spain, Mrs. Pahls began to doubt her hunch. She didn't witness any overt attempts to foil their group efforts.

        “The person acted differently toward me. I wasn't perceiving any "Mole' action going on. So I switched to another person,” she says.

        That was her mistake. When she taped the final episode a week later, she learned the Mole's identity. (Of course, she can't say who it is.)

        “As it turned out, I was right the first time,” she says.

        Other than that, she has no regrets. The experienced world traveler ranks The Mole ahead of her trips to Antarctica, tiger trekking in Nepal or gorilla trekking in Uganda.

        Mrs. Pahls, a real estate investor who owns student housing in Clifton, applied for The Mole after hearing about it on TV last August. (She also applied for Survivor 2.) She was summoned to Los Angeles on her birthday, Sept. 11, for an interview. Shooting started a few weeks later.

        The Mole was more demanding than ABC has shown viewers, she says. Although the 10 contestants often stayed in fancy European hotels, they spent a lot of the day sequestered in their rooms — sometimes up to 10 hours — without TVs, newspapers, magazines or telephones.

        “It was very stressful. There was a lot of sleep deprivation. We couldn't talk to each other,” she says.

        She was just recovering from bronchitis when taping started. Parachuting in the Mojave Desert, flying to Paris, and walking the hills outside Crest, France, brought on a relapse shown in the second episode (Jan. 16).

        “I really couldn't breathe,” she says. “I'm not in that bad of shape, though in general, I've got 20 years on the next person on the show (except Charlie, 63, the retired New York detective).

        “I work out with a personal trainer, and I got a lot of kidding for it.”

        In the third episode, she earned an exemption from the “execution” by performing four tasks — having her hair dyed green, putting casts on both legs, wearing a ball-and-chain and posing nude.

        Posing naked on national TV?

        “I really wanted that exemption,” says Mrs. Pahls, wife of Jim Pahls, retired president of the Andrew Jergens Co., and mother of two grown children.

        “This is a family show, and I trusted the producers implicitly,” says Mrs. Pahls, who was covered with a sheet. “I was more covered than I was at the beach.”

        The psychological stress also took its toll.

        “You didn't know who you could believe, or who you could trust,” she says.

        The players made extensive notes in small pocket note books all day, something not shown by ABC. Kathryn and Jim, two of the four finalists, took the most notes, she says.

        Every day, a camera crew would interview each person privately for comments inserted into the telecasts. Producers told TV critics last month they used these daily sessions with the Mole to give “strategy points for what might be coming up the next day,” says Scott Stone, executive producer.

        “During the games, I was not aware of how the Mole was getting information,” she says. “I had no clue that Jim and Steve had an alliance” a secret revealed Tuesday. (How the Mole operated will be shown in the finale at 8 p.m. Feb. 28, Channels 9, 2).

        Adding to the strain was the ban on talking to fellow players or calling home. “It was hard keeping everything bottled up,” she says.

        She finally had someone to talk to when her son, Adam Roberts, 25, was flown to Spain for a surprise visit in the Feb. 6 show. She told him so much about her experience that the 1994 Country Day graduate left convinced that she was the Mole. Adam and other family members learned Tuesday that she wasn't.

        “I couldn't tell anybody. For months I had to keep the secret,” Mrs. Pahls says.

        She couldn't even tell her family the truth about her trip to Los Angeles this week. Her husband “had to do some baby sitting for the grandkids Tuesday, because I told him I was called out to Los Angeles for a publicity shoot. He says I've gotten too good at lying.”
       Ms. Pahls says she wanted to thank Tristate residents for being so supportive, so kind (and so polite!) in the past six weeks.

        “I couldn't go anywhere without being recognized. But people didn't bother me. They'd just say, "I saw you on TV' or wave. The people were so sweet,” she says.

        She's not sure what lies ahead for The Mole contestants. Has she been sought out for endorsements, a book deal or TV commercials?

        “Nothing yet! Absolutely zero!” she says. “I would do any of that sort of thing.”

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