Mass. hospital worker claims $758M jackpot
Mavis Wanczyk, 53, will take home $336 million after taxes for holding winning Powerball ticket.
A BRAINTREE, MASS. — 53-year-old Massachusetts hospital worker stepped forward Thursday to claim the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in U.S. history
a $758.7 million Powerball — prize after breaking the — news to her employer the way the rest of us only dream of: “I called and told them I will not be coming back.”
“The first thing I want to do is just sit back and relax,” Mavis Wanczyk said.
Wanczyk chose to take a lump-sum payment of $480 million, or $336 million after taxes, lottery officials said. Winners who take a gradual payout get more money, though it is spread out over several decades.
The previous evening, she recalled, she was leaving work with a firefighter and remarked, “It’s never going to be me. It’s just a pipe dream that I’ve always had.” Then she read the number on her ticket and realized she had won.
Wanczyk worked for 32 years in a clerical job in the nursing department at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, the hospital said.
The jackpot is the largest ever won with a single ticket.
Wanczyk has two adult children, a daughter and a son.
Wanczyk bought a total of five tickets. Two were computer-generated Powerball tickets, and three used numbers that she chose. The winning ticket, she said, was one with numbers that used family birthdays.
Her inspiration for the final digit — the Powerball — came from her penchant for playing the number four every Friday in a Keno game.