Widow has 758 million reasons to quit her job
NEW YORK — A widowed Massachusetts mother of two who scooped the largest single jackpot in US history — $758.7 million — said it was a dream came true on Thursday and immediately quit her hospital job of 32 years.
Mavis Wanczyk, 53, said she had played the lottery as a “pipe dream”, never believing it would one day be possible for her to retire early from the Mercy Medical Center, where she worked in patient care.
On Thursday came true.
“I’ve called them and told them I will not be coming back,” she said to laughter at a media conference hosted by the Massachusetts State Lottery.
“I’m going to go hide in my bed!” she added when asked how she planned to celebrate. that dream
Wanczyk selected the winning numbers — which included family birthdays — and bought the ticket from a convenience store in Chicopee, a small town 160 kilometers west of Boston, calling it “a chance I had to take”.
Killed in hit-and-run
“I was just there to buy it for luck,” she said, chewing gum and grinning.
Accompanied to the media conference by her mother and two sisters, she was still dazed after her monumental win.
It came nine months after William Wanczyk, her former husband and the father of her children, was killed by a hitand-run driver while waiting at a bus shelter in the Massachusetts town of Amherst, US media reported. the winner of the $758.7 million Powerball jackpot, is pictured in Braintree, Massachusetts, on Thursday.
A local man, accused of driving a pickup truck at high speed, was subsequently charged with offenses including motor vehicle homicide, manslaughter while under the influence and leaving the scene.
Powerball officials called Wednesday’s draw “the highest jackpot won on a single ticket and the biggest lottery prize ever awarded to one single person”.
The $758.7 million jackpot is Powerball’s highest since a January 2016 world record of $1.6 billion, which was split between three ticket holders from California, Florida and Tennessee.
Each took home $528.8 million.
Time to relax
The winning numbers were 6, 7, 16, 23 and 26, from five white balls, and 4 as the so-called Powerball number on a red ball.
The retailer that sold the winning ticket is to receive $50,000, which he has committed to local charities.
Wanczyk now has the choice of taking the jackpot as an annuity spread over 30 years or a one-off cash lump sum — reportedly $336 million after taxes.
“The first thing I want to do? I just want to sit back and relax. I had a pipe dream and my pipe dream has finally come true,” Wanczyk said.
She said she found out she had won from a firefighter colleague as they were leaving work at night and promptly went into shock.
“I couldn’t drive anywhere, I couldn’t do anything,” she said.
“So he followed me actually to make sure I was safely home . ... Now it’s like, ‘I am a winner’, and I’m scared, but I’ll be ok.”