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Jill Wagner was 15 and sitting in Cinnabon at Hanes Mall with a friend when a stranger approached and asked if he could shoot her picture.

"He told me that he was doing this shoot in Jamaica where they were having a contest to find some models," the former Welcome resident said in a telephone interview. "I thought maybe he wasn't being serious or that he had other interests."

She gave him her dad's business card and never really expected to hear from him again. But soon she was on her way to Jamaica. A few years later, she was seriously pursuing a career in show business.

Now, Wagner, 30, is co-host of the ABC series "Wipeout" and has garnered fame and something of a cult following for appearing in a series of Mercury car commercials. She also appeared last year in the horror film "Splinter" and had a small role in the locally shot movie "Junebug."

"Wipeout" ends its second season Wednesday, but has been renewed for a third season.

"I like the fact that I get to go to work every single day and act like a 12-year-old," she said via cell phone while driving around Los Angeles in her Mercury hybrid. "Who doesn't want that, you know?"

Raised primarily by her father, David, and grandmother Roberta Wagner, Jill Wagner said she was always something of a tomboy growing up and had never considered modeling before being approached by the photographer in the mall.

"My father, he was pretty much a man's man," she said. "He would take my brother and I out to the ballpark. We also learned to shoot guns. And when I was little, my brother and I built forts everywhere on the ground at the house. Of course, though, after I helped him build the fort, he wouldn't let me come in."

David Wagner was skeptical when he heard about the modeling job, but he talked to the photographer and his wife. When he learned that it was, indeed, a legitimate operation, he let her go.

After graduating from Ledford High School in 1997, she went to N.C. State and majored in business. But in 2001, after getting her degree, she started thinking about moving to California to further her modeling career and take up acting.

"I always told her to pursue and follow her dreams," said David Wagner, who owns a tire shop in Winston-Salem. "She came to me and said, 'Dad, I want to go to California.' And I said, 'Are you sure about that?' And she said yeah. And I said, 'Well, all I can tell you is that you've got to do it now. You can't do it five or six years from now and look back and say you wished you had done it before.' "

Jill beat on plenty of doors and was in Las Vegas when her agent called about what was to be her big break.

"There had been this show called 'Punk'd' with Ashton Kutcher," she said. "They were having an audition for a female sketch performer. I didn't really know what the show was, and I was like, 'Are you serious? I'm going to fly back from Las Vegas to audition for a show I'm probably not going to get?' But I decided to fly back anyway, even though I was winning at the craps table."

The "Candid Camera"-like show featured Kutcher and others staging elaborate pranks against Kutcher's celebrity friends. Wagner got the part and participated in about dozen sketches involving, among others, Katie Holmes, Bow Wow and Tommy Lee. She also became friends with Kutcher, who helped her secure a manager and an agent and taught her about improv comedy.

In the meantime, she got a starring role on the short-lived Spike TV vampire show "Blade: The Series" and had bit parts on "Bones," "Monk" and "Stargate Atlantis."

She also auditioned for the Mercury commercials and became the company's spokesmodel in 2005. One of the better-known ads featured her walking out of a coffee shop to her Mercury Milan. A bystander says to her, "It had me just on the looks."

"Wipeout" creator Matt Kunitz saw the commercials, and when it came time to cast the series in 2008, he got in touch with Wagner.

On the game show, contestants must navigate an obstacle course filled with contraptions such as giant rubber balls and mechanical boxing gloves. Wagner, who provides play-by-play commentary, has never run the course, but said she believes she would do OK at it.

"I have a bit of an advantage because I get to watch it over and over and over again," she said. "And I get to see our testers go through it. They're ex-Marines, and they're flawless in going through the course. I look at what kind of shoes they wear, how fast they do certain events."

But, she said, there really is no single strategy to succeeding in the game.

"You look at some of the more athletic people that come through, and they wind up not even making it," she said. "So really, it's kind of a flip of a coin, whether you do well or not."

Her Mercury commercials are popular on YouTube, and several MySpace and Facebook fan sites have popped up. Roberta Wagner said many people are also starting to recognize her granddaughter when she comes home.

"Children, especially, really like 'Wipeout,' " she said. "So they know who she is. We were at the paint store with her father, and we had some people come up to us and ask for autographs, not only for themselves, but for their children."

Jill said she enjoys working on "Wipeout" but hopes to pick up more acting gigs in the near future.

"I always say I wanted to act because I can't shut my mouth long enough to be a model and for someone to take a picture," she said. "I'm kind of winging it with my manager right now. But I just want to try to go full speed into film and TV."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com