The winner of a $500 shopping spree rejected the idea of two carts. She didn’t want to consume precious time.

Eric Gambrill, store manager at Tonganoxie’s B&J Apple Market, concentrated on his watch.

“Ten seconds,” he told Elder. “Five. Two. One. Go for it!”

And Elder was off. She sprinted toward the bacon and sausage. Hams were next, then pizzas. Onto the meat case, where Elder tossed packages into her ever-growing stash.

“Two minutes left,” Gambrill reminded her.

Over to the freezer case. A long sausage, juice, a bucket of ice cream. Out of the cool and onto the staples: flour, cake mixes, Crisco, then cottage cheese, milk.

“Ten seconds.”

Three large packets of Velveeta plunked on top of the stack.

“Time.”

Elder and Gambrill wheeled her bounty toward the checkout stands.

“My mouth is dry,” Elder said. “It went fast. I missed my coffee. It was great fun. First time I ever won anything like this.”

Several days earlier, Elder had registered for the shopping spree, which was part of a celebration of Apple Market corporation’s eighth anniversary. Last Wednesday, a store representative called her with the good news.

“I thought it was a prank at first,” Elder said. “I finally came to my senses. I loved it.”

Elder said she’d visited the store Thursday night, planning her strategy. Her husband, Jimmy, and son, LeRoy, offered only minimal advice before she left home Friday morning: Run fast and be careful.

“LeRoy told me to wear my tennis shoes,” she added.

Elder had several rules to follow: She could gather up to $500 worth of merchandise in three minutes, but no more than three of one item and no alcohol or tobacco.

As he helped stack Elder’s haul onto the checkout stand, something dawned on Gambrill.

“You must have cows at home,” he told Elder, whose family farm is near Linwood.

“Yes,” she said, smiling as Gambrill unloaded several more packages of pork. “We quit hogs when they went down in price about four years ago.”

After Airel Somolik slid the final item across the scanner, the monitor told the story: $314.42.

Elder was a little short of her $500 allotment. So Gambrill presented her with a gift certificate for $185.58.

“You can go slower on that,” he told her. “It was fun to watch. You did well.”

Elder walked, smiling, to the parking lot as she and Adrian Cannedy pushed two carts brimming with white plastic sacks. Elder had come prepared with a cooler in her trunk. Cannedy carefully loaded the goods in her car.

“Isn’t that wonderful,” Cannedy said. “Fantastic. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.”