Powerball Lottery At $60M, Clerk Who Sells $1 Million Winner Says Things Like That Happen To Her
The Powerball lottery jackpot edged up by another $10 million after Saturday’s drawing saw no one hit all six numbers. The jackpot now stands at $60 million, just one week after a single ticket in Missouri connected for a whopping $203 million top prize.
There were two winners of the million-dollar second prize in Saturday’s drawing, one ticket sold in California, the other in Washington State.
But in North Carolina, a single, small drugstore has defied the odds by selling its second $1 million ticket in the past five years. Given that the odds of matching the first five numbers of a Powerball ticket, without matching the final Power Ball number, are just one in 5,153,632, that would appear to be a highly unusual accomplishment.
“It’s pretty unusual for one store in the same town to sell two $1 million winning tickets,” said the manager of TAS Drug in Cherryville, Stephanie Greene. “Everybody in town should buy their tickets from us. We’re the lucky store.”
The first million-dollar winner sold by the store came in January of 2009, when a group of five sheriff’s deputies pooled their cash and walked away a million bucks richer, as a group.
This time, the winning ticket was dispensed on November 8, by cheerful 21-year-old store clerk Zalene Brant — who told a local newspaper that she wasn’t surprised to sell a winning Powerball ticket because that’s the sort of thing that happens to her all the time.
“I’m glad that I made somebody’s day,” Brant said told The Gaston Gazette. “I hope it’s somebody who deserves it and really needs the money.”
The second-prize Powerball winners were again a money-pooling team, this time consisting of two men, Evans Anthony, of Shelby, and William Anthony, of Cherryville.
There were 12,614,886 tickets in total sold for Saturday’s Powerball drawing, which was just the second since November 8, when the single Missouri ticket hit the $203 million jackpot. The winner of that life-altering prize has not yet stepped forward to claim the cash.
All told, there were 368,438 tickets that won at least the minimum $4 Powerball prize in Saturday’s drawing, and $4,238,727 in cash won, including those two million-dollar second-prize winners.
The second-prize ticket sold in California is actually worth $960,667 due to that state’s pari-mutuel payout system.
The winning Powerball numbers, drawn at 10:59 p.m. in Tallahassee, Florida, were as follows:
13 — 16 — 33 — 35 — 51 Power Ball 28
Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot of $60 million is actually worth $37.3 million to a winner who takes the cash in a single payment.
