LEWISTON – Lucille Gooldrup loves Pepsi.

The 58-year-old grandmother has a diet soda at least twice a day. When she catches her eldest son drinking a Coke, she pokes fun at him.

“I said, What’s the matter with you? I didn’t raise you that way,'” she said.

Now her Pepsi devotion – and a single bottle cap – have earned her a free trip to California. And maybe something even bigger.

$1 billion.

“A lot of people don’t believe the contest. They don’t really do it,” she said. “I can tell you it really happens.”

Gooldrup, a down-to-earth Lewiston native, is one of 200 national finalists in Pepsi’s “Play for a Billion” contest.

To participate, players find special 10-character codes on the inside of bottle caps and enter those codes on a Pepsi Web site. Every week, Pepsi chooses codes at random, making those players into finalists.

Gooldrup, who was also a finalist last year, asked friends and family to give her their bottle caps if they weren’t planning to use them. Within two weeks, she’d entered numbers from 500 of the little yellow caps, the contest’s maximum.

Pepsi notifies players if one of their codes is a winner.

Gooldrup wasn’t hopeful. After all, what were the odds that she’d make the contest two years in a row?

But one day in mid-June, a FedEx driver knocked on her apartment door. He had a letter from Pepsi.

Gooldrup won an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to Los Angeles. She and her husband will attend Pepsi-sponsored parties and will tour a movie studio. Then, during the highlight of the trip, Gooldrup will join a televised sweepstakes. She’ll play for $1 million.

Then for $1 billion.

Even as she sat in her kitchen this week, holding the glossy packet sent to contest finalists, Gooldrup couldn’t believe her luck. Becoming a finalist once was surprising. Becoming a finalist twice was unbelievable.

“Maybe it’s an omen. Maybe it’s a good sign.” she said.

Gooldrup has lived with her husband in the same three-bedroom apartment in downtown Lewiston for 17 years. Recently, her mother moved in with them.

Gooldrup dreams of buying a house somewhere in the city, if she wins any money from Pepsi. She’s talked about giving away money and opening up a small food kitchen.

But if she doesn’t win, Gooldrup said she’ll still be happy. She and her husband went to Orlando for the contest last year. With parties and events, she said, “It was the best time I ever had in my life.”

She expects Los Angeles to be just as much fun.

“I’m just glad I won the trip,” she said.

Gooldrup and her husband will leave for California in mid-September. The “Play for a Billion” sweepstakes show will air at 8 p.m. Sept. 12 on ABC.

Until then, with two free trips in two years and the chance to become a billionaire, Gooldrup will keep teasing her son about his choice of soda.

“He’s promised me if I win, he’ll never drink another Coke,” she said.