Mother Nature played a part in a Clinton woman’s $500,000 Powerball® prize.
Gayle Fraker bought her winning ticket while out running errands in the middle of a downpour. With the weather, she decided to stop at a different store than the one where she usually buys her tickets. And the next day at work, everyone was talking about the $500,000 prize won at the store where she’d stopped. But she’d left her tickets at home, so she couldn’t check them until that night.
As soon as she saw that she’d won a big prize, she took a picture of herself screaming for joy and sent it to her adult children, who all soon converged at her house. She immediately had them double-check the numbers to be sure she really had won.
Fraker, 60, is a supervisor at DM Services Inc., a direct-mail company in Clinton. She bought her easy-pick ticket at the Kwik Star, 911 S. 14th St. in Clinton. She came within one number of having at least a share of last Wednesday’s $87.3 million Powerball jackpot.
Her ticket matched four of the first five numbers and the Powerball that night to initially win a $50,000 prize. But she also added the Power Play® option to her purchase, which multiplied her prize to $500,000. Fraker said she always adds the Power Play so that if she wins, she’ll win big.
That night’s winning numbers were: 27-47-61-62-69 and Powerball 4. The Power Play number was 10. Kwik Star will receive a $500 bonus from the Iowa Lottery for selling the $500,000-winning ticket at one of its stores.
Fraker said she plans to use her winnings to pay off her mortgage and all her bills, and then plan for retirement.
She claimed the second $500,000 Powerball prize won in Iowa this month. A Waterloo man won a $500,000 prize by purchasing the same type of Power Play ticket for the Powerball drawing on July 8. Tu Kha Maung, 29, claimed his prize July 10.
As she looked at her prize check today, Fraker just kept shaking her head. She said it’s crazy and awesome and her heart still hasn’t stopped pounding.
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