Lia Mort prevailed as the toughest competitor on the CBS reality show, “Tough as Nails,” in Wednesday’s finale and won a Ford truck along with a $200,000 prize.

“I was hoping for an adventure. I like to compete but it’s still hard for me to believe I won,” the 54-year-old from central Pennsylvania said this week after the season finale aired.

An Army chief warrant officer, Mort has served in the Marines, worked as a professional firefighter and in construction. She was chosen by the producers to be one of 12 competitors in its third season and was billed as a “Jill-of-all-trades.”

Mort proved that moniker during about 20 timed challenges in 10 episodes that included searching through a pile of 600 tires to find four with the same number, mounting them onto wheels and pressurizing them.

Another challenge involved each participant raising themselves 11 stories with a zoom boom to replace a lightbulb.

While she approached each with a positive attitude, the water challenge was the toughest. “I don’t know why,” said Mort. “I’m a pretty decent swimmer. I’ve done triathlons.”

The final challenge, which aired Wednesday evening, had contestants racing through obstacles, smashing a wall with a sledgehammer, stacking 30 pallets, untying and dragging a dummy up a slope, removing four tires and attaching them to a container to make stairs, cutting three pieces of metal with a grinder to make six steps, driving two stakes with a sledgehammer and raising a rope ladder to reach a truck.

Mort finished first, clinching the championship.

“It felt like angels were carrying me,” she said of the feeling she had during the last challenge. “I learned I have more patience and am calmer than I thought. I was in the zone.”

“Lia proved the old adage, you can never judge a book by its cover,” said Phil Keoghan, the show’s host and co-creator. “Our 5-foot, 3-inch, 54-year-old ‘Jill-of-all-trades’ flew in under the radar from the beginning and continued to master any job we threw at her. Her life skills, smarts and physical strength were evident from the first challenge, which she won, to the finale where she climbed to victory after a grueling 10 episode battle against 11 other hardened individuals.”

Mort and her husband, John, watched each episode together at home. “It made me miss everyone. The whole team and crew and contestants,” she said.

She’s stayed in touch with many of the people she met while filming the reality show earlier this year and plans to create a podcast, More Than Tough, interviewing past contestants and crew members from the show with fellow competitor, Kalimba Edwards, 43, a fire captain from Nebraska, in January.

Mort and her husband plan to use some of the prize winnings to pay taxes and their mortgage but will be giving much of the rest of it away. She’s giving $5,000 to each of the 11 competitors on the show to donate to their charity of choice and will be supporting a friend who has started an orphanage in Uganda called Victorious Children’s Ministry.

“John and I feel blessed, and if you’re blessed, you need to lift others,” she said.