Taking a chance: Local residents dream of Powerball win
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Bobbi Belleville, who purchased 15 Powerball tickets, said she would use her winnings to open a facility for Alzheimer’s and disabled patients. She’d also retire, she joked.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Cheryl Harper, of Washington, dreams of opening a horse ranch, where disabled youth and adults can live and heal through therapeutic riding. Harper said she’d put her Powerball winnings toward that dream Monday at Gabby’s Market, where she played her lucky numbers.
The $1 billion Powerball jackpot arrives just in time for the holiday season, and local residents are trying their luck for the game’s second-largest payout in history.
“We still have our regular customers, and we’ve seen some new faces – just people passing through,” said Stephanie Grindle, owner of Grindle’s Market in Vanderbilt.
In fact, she said, a man driving from Pittsburgh stopped at the Fayette County store to buy a ticket and told her he was stopping at every lottery retailer he saw on his way to play the Powerball and increase his odds.
The lucky winner of Monday night’s drawing, if there is one, will take home $1 billion before taxes, the second-largest jackpot in Powerball history and the fifth-largest in U.S. lottery history, according to a press release from the Multi-State Lottery Association.
The drawing is the 38th in this jackpot run, which began Aug. 4, after five white balls matched the Aug. 3 Powerball drawing for $206.9 million. Excitement surrounding the jackpot grew in the weeks leading to Halloween, reaching a crescendo over the weekend, after Saturday’s Powerball numbers were drawn sans winner.
“Friday and Saturday were quite busy,” said Lucy Mehaffey, who mans the register at Gabby’s Market in Washington. “We would have a line all the way out past the produce. Everybody who shopped other things shopped for the tickets. It was busy.”
Sales were up in Greene County, too, where locals dropped into convenience and gas station stores and local Moose lodges to play their lucky numbers.
“The last two weeks, Powerball sales have really increased, probably double the average,” said Mike Harmon, administrator at Moose Lodge 461 in Waynesburg. “(People are) already talking about how to spend the money, what they would buy, where they would go, all that stuff.”
In local stores and online, lottery players imagined paying off mortgages, purchasing their favorite sports teams and traveling aboard Virgin Galactic’s luxurious spaceplane (one 90-minute ride costs, for lottery winners, a mere $450,000).
Folks shared articles detailing the costs of private jets and really big yachts, and this journalist indulged in fantasies of summering in her very own palace (Villa Mansi, a 53,820 square-foot palace, boasts elegant, muraled walls, exquisite trim work, stately halls, 30 full baths and 30 bedrooms, and a lovely 40,000 square-mile park in sunny Tuscany, and is listed for $17,500,000 on Christie’s International Real Estate).
But not everyone spent the hours leading up to Monday’s Powerball drawing dreaming of personal wealth beyond the scope of imagination.
Grindle and market employee Brandi Hayden said a lot of customers promised to come back and give them significant tips if they happen to be the big winner, while others bought the women Powerball tickets of their own.
“They said if we win, they’ll come back to at least get their $2 back,” Grindle said.
Cheryl Harper, of Washington, purchased Powerball tickets at Gabby’s Market Monday afternoon. If she wins $1 billion, Harper plans on purchasing land off Route 18 and turning the grounds into a horse ranch for disabled children and adults.
“I’d do what I always dreamed of doing: I’d buy that mountain beside my house, build me a log house up there with a matching log barn, fill it full of horses. I’d start a ranch for handicapped kids,” she said. “(They could) ride the horses and grow confident. That’s been my dream.”
Bobbi Belleville, who purchased 15 Powerball tickets at Gabby’s Market, also envisions her would-be winnings going toward the greater good.
Belleville said she would build a town that is actually a treatment center for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, to provide a comforting environment for patients.
“I’d staff that with the good people I know,” said Belleville, adding she’d welcome people with disabilities into the town, where they could live out their dreams.
“The kids that have disabilities would be supported by people who were working there. That’s my life-long goal. Don’t get me wrong, I want to retire, too,” she added with a laugh.
As of Monday afternoon, Powerball sales had generated $78 million in revenue, said Ewa Swope, press secretary of Pennsylvania Lottery.
Tickets are $2 each, meaning that roughly 39 million tickets are vying for Monday evening’s jackpot.
The odds of winning the lottery jackpot are roughly 1 in 292.2 million.
Several people in line for tickets throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania said they would be happy to split Monday evening’s jackpot – 10 winners would still walk away with $100 million before taxes. And even $100 million – which weighs more than 2,200 pounds in $100 bills – can buy a lot of things for a lot of people.
Perhaps Harper summed it up best: “I don’t care who wins. Put the money to good use.”
Mark Hofmann contributed to this report.