Since December, when the third season of "The Apprentice" started, John and Deanna Colaizzi have invited friends, family, neighbors - heck, just about anyone they knew - to their gated Holladay home to cheer on daughter Tana Goertz as she has clawed her way through an urban jungle on the hit reality show.

Goertz, a 37-year-old former Utahn who now lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, is one of the two remaining contestants vying for a slot in Donald Trump's organization. The finale airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on KSL Channel 5.

"We always start out expecting 20 and we end up with 30 to 60," Deanna Colaizzi said. "We're really passionate, so you can imagine what kind of a nutcase I have been, watching her every week."

Last Thursday, the Colaizzi party was in full swing for the penultimate episode, which pitted Tana against 26-year-old Kendra Todd of Boynton Beach, Fla.

"It's the Italian way" to load up the parties, Deanna Colaizzi said. And with some 40 people crammed into the living room and a dining room brimming with food, it was a model of entertainment excess. Even two of John Colaizzi's out-of-town co-workers flew in to be at the party.

"I came to support their family," said Mark Peterson, who jetted from Denver. "He [John] told me about them, that a lot of good friends and family come to watch his girl."

In the dining room, bowls of buffalo wings, chips and dip, chocolate desserts, wine, sodas, chili, and three cakes covered a long table. One cake said "Go Tana." Another sported a plastic shark (presumably a metaphor for "The Donald").

The one rule enforced at the Colaizzi party is that chatter must dull to near silence when the show begins. Then, the only extraneous sounds are the clinking of wine glasses and the muted din of toddlers running amok in the nearby kitchen. As the show unfolds, the tension rises to a point where Tana's mom squeezes a water bottle until it crackles in her hands.

"Oh, my nerves!" she says.

Tana, who sold Mary Kay cosmetics before embarking on her television journey, lived in Utah for about four years in the late 1990s while managing her sister Tiffany's Salt Lake City consignment store, Name Droppers.

After Tana married former KTVX Channel 4 meteorologist Curtis Goertz, the couple moved to Iowa where he landed a job with a television affiliate. The move meant Tana had to drop out of the University of Utah after three years; she and Goertz subsequently had two children. Without a college degree, Tana was cast with the "Street Smarts" team of contestants on "The Apprentice."

Her parents describe her as a tough, motivated woman who knows how to get down to business. When she was only about 9, she sold hundreds of padded phone rests door-to-door for an $8,000 profit. Once, she persuaded the Rainbow Casino in Wendover, Nev., to open its buffet just for her and three other people.

"When we found out she applied for 'The Apprentice,' we just burst out laughing," family friend Mark Isaac said. "Anyone who could convince a casino to open a buffet for just the four of us will win on that show."

Someone else who respects Tana's gumption is fellow "Apprentice" contestant Audrey Evans, the 22-year-old Utahn fired from the show a couple months ago.

"She's a very sweet and very easygoing person," said Evans, who has since moved to Los Angeles to pursue a television career. "She's very entrepreneurial."

Now that Tana has translated her business sense to television stardom, she faces one last hurdle - the finals. Her family, including a brother and sister who live in Utah and two out-of-town siblings, will be in New York for Thursday's finale, which will end with The Donald saying, "You're hired!"

Whether Tana hears that, or the dreaded "You're fired," the neighbors can expect more commotion at the Colaizzi residence. "We hate to see it end," John Colaizzi said. "But when we come back - win, lose or draw - we'll have one last big party."