College student wins nanny lottery: Will go around the world for a year with family
Alaire Moore just won the jackpot of all nanny jobs.
She and more than 24,000 other people applied for the job of traveling the world with M’Kenzie and Derek Tillotson and their three children for one year.
She got the job.
The Tillotsons posted a video to Facebook and YouTube in January advertising for a nanny.
The job sounded like a dream: Travel with the Riverton, Utah, family for one year and take care of their kids — ages 5, 3 and 4 months — homeschool the kindergartener and get two weeks off around the winter holidays for $1,200 to $1,500 a month. Oh, and all travel expenses paid.
They were shocked when thousands around the globe applied for the job. “Our family at one point just said hire a couple of them,” M’Kenzie told Fox 13 in Salt Lake City.
Derek was hoping a Mary Poppins would “fall out of the sky” and be perfect for the job. But the hunt was hard because they found so many good candidates.
They winnowed 24,244 applications to 50. But then Derek wanted to look at the waiting list of 7,000 applications that came in after the cut-off date.
“I was so nervous that we missed somebody,” he told Fox 13.
Apparently they had: Moore.
The Sugar Land, Texas, woman is studying special education at Utah Valley University and works at a treatment center for autistic teenage boys.
“To know that I was chosen out of over 24,000 applicants is very humbling,” Moore told The Houston Chronicle. “It has helped me see that my flaws can be strengths and that someone else sees my personality as an added asset.”
The Tillotsons, who are both in sales, plan to work during the trip and are paying for the journey themselves, they told ABC News.
“We want to go now before the kids’ obligations and schooling makes it too hard to go away for a long period of time,” M’Kenzie told ABC.
The family recently invited their two final nanny candidates to spend the weekend with them. That’s when they chose Moore.
“Alaire is just a really sunny, happy person,” M’Kenzie told Fox 13. “Really good energy, and I saw her as someone who would just add to our happiness, to our positive vibes, and the overall flow of our family.”
With the nanny hired, the Tillotsons put their house up for sale this week.
They plan to begin their trip in July in New York City before flying to Iceland and then to Scandinavia. They’ll chronicle their travels on Instagram.
This story was originally published March 17, 2017 at 10:12 AM with the headline "College student wins nanny lottery: Will go around the world for a year with family."