Waitress: My lottery-win pal took money and ran

INSTEAD OF splitting a $300,000 lottery win with her coworkers, an Arkansas waitress just split.

Leslie Underwood says she is stunned her best friend and colleague Mandy Vanhouten reneged on their deal to share the spoils of a Christmas lottery jackpot.

“She decided to take it and run,” Underwood told Arkansas Matters.

The waitresses at Sportsman’s Drive-In in Stuttgart were given lottery tickets as a Christmas gift from their boss.

Underwood says she and Vanhouten agreed to share them. “She handed me five and she had five,” Underwood told the news website Arkansas Matters.

One of Vanhouten’s tickets for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery was a $300,000 winner. Initially, Underwood believed everything was fine and they would divide the money as planned.

“We were both reading the back of it trying to find the little, ‘You’re pranked!’” Underwood said. “But no, it was a real one. We talked about how life-changing it would be and what we were going to do with this money. She even talked about giving back since it was such a blessing.”

But Vanhouten claimed the $300,000 alone. In Wednesday’s press release, she said she was looking forward to using the prize to “make her life easier.”

Since then, Underwood has not been able to reach her, and Vanhouten has not showed up for work.

“I asked, ‘Is she sick or something?’ and she (Underwood) said, ‘It’s a long story,’” co-worker Haley Johnson told Arkansas Matters.

Underwood says she and Vanhouten were friends for almost 10 years, and she was shaken when she saw a picture of Vanhouten with the large check in her hands.

“I helped her get the job, put in a good word, stuck my neck out for her, let her stay with me so she didn’t have to drive back and forth,” Underwood said.

“I think that’s what hurt me the most, is as much as I’ve done, she could have done right for once.”

Underwood’s boss warned her something like this might happen.

“Lucky told us here at the bar, ‘Y’all won't be friends after this,’” she told Arkansas Matters. “We were like, ‘Why would you say that?’ Money changes people. Now we see.”