Lottery Moments

Sometimes, good things happen to good people.

I see a lot of that when I meet lottery winners.  Not only good, hard working people, but quite often people who also, for one reason or another,  really need to win the lottery.

A Cedar Rapids woman said she was just following her instincts when she purchased a $200,000-winning Powerball ticket a few weeks ago.

“I bought my ticket four minutes before the cutoff,” Tina De Anda said Friday as she claimed her prize at the Iowa Lottery’s regional office in Cedar Rapids.

“Something told me to go get one, so I had to hurry. I was just at home cleaning and I had a feeling.”

De Anda, is a 39-year old single mom with two daughters, and said she only plays Powerball sporadically and when she does make a purchase, it’s for just one ticket.

“I still can’t believe it happened,” she said. “I thought never in my life it would happen to me, so that’s unbelievable,” she told officials at the Iowa Lottery.

The winning numbers were: 20-30-37-50-52 and Powerball 33. The Power Play multiplier was 2.

Her ticket was just one number away from winning a share of Wednesday’s $58.6 million jackpot, which was won by a ticket purchased in Pennsylvania.

De Anda said she didn’t realize until the night after the drawing that she was a big winner. She said she had to run to a local grocery store to buy ingredients to make a treat for a Halloween potluck and while she was at the store, she had her ticket checked.

“It’s not as much as you would get if you won the jackpot, but it’s still a life-changing event for us,” she said. “It opens up a lot of possibilities and makes life a little easier.”

De Anda said she will use her winnings to pay off student loans, her car and the bill for one of her daughter’s dental braces. After that, a family trip is in the works.

“We’ve never, ever taken a vacation, so we’re going to take a vacation, probably oversees somewhere,” she said.

Man, what a great story. I wish DeAnda all the best.

By the Numbers:

Tonight’s Mega Millions draw is worth an estimated $52 million.

Good luck everyone.