No truth in essay, no Hannah Montana tickets as prize

GARLAND, Texas — A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay falsely claiming her father died in Iraq isn't going to the show after all.

The contest's sponsor, a store chain named Club Libby Lu, withdrew the prize Saturday and awarded it to another contestant. It didn't identify the new winner.

"With this decision, we hope to revive the intended spirit of the contest, which was designed to make a little girl's holidays extra special," Club Libby Lu Chief Executive Mary Drolet said Saturday.

On Friday, the sponsor had said the prize would not be withdrawn.

Officials of the Chicago-based chain surprised the 6-year-old on Friday at a Club Libby Lu store in a mall in the Dallas suburb of Garland. Club Libby Lu sells clothes, accessories and games for girls.

The girl won a makeover that included a blond Hannah Montana wig and the grand prize: airfare for four to Albany, N.Y., and four tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert Jan. 9.

The opening line in the girl's essay was: "My daddy died this year in Iraq."

The girl's mother had told Club Libby Lu officials the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said. But the mother, Priscilla Ceballos, admitted later Friday that the essay and the military information she provided about her daughter's father were untrue.

"We did the essay, and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win," Ceballos said in an interview with KDFW-TV of Dallas. "But when [Caulfield] asked me if this essay is true, I said 'No, this essay is not true.' "