The possibility of winning big has kept Rod Jacobs buying Powerball tickets for years, even though he's always wondered if the lottery is rigged - that is, until last week when he and his roommate, Marian Mathewson, won $100,000 off a ticket Mathewson purchased at the McCammon Chevron in Idaho.
"Now I'm eating crow with a smile," Jacobs said.
Jacobs said he'll probably put his share of the money in the bank because he already has everything he needs. But he said Mathewson, an avid quilter, bought the sewing machine of her dreams, a computerized model that cost about $6,000.
Jacobs realized he had a winning ticket Jan. 13, when he checked his numbers from the drawing the night before.
"We won $7 on line C and got the Powerball," Jacobs said. "But we got all five on line D. I called Marian and said 'something good happened to us today and we're taking a road trip to Boise.'"
For picking the right numbers on line D, the friends won $100,000, but had the Powerball number, which was 38, been on line D rather than line C, they would have hit the multi-million dollar jackpot.
"It put a grin on my face anyway," Jacobs said.
The one thing about winning that didn't make Jacobs smile was paying the taxes.
"The government took 32.8 percent of the money," he said.
But even after splitting the money with Mathewson and giving the IRS its share of the haul, Jacobs still made out pretty well, taking home about $33,000.
Jacobs said he buys the tickets about 90 percent of the time, but since Mathewson was headed by the store on her way home, she picked it up instead.
"Now I'm eating crow with a smile," Jacobs said.
Eating crow tastes pretty good when the main coarse is $100K
RJOh
wish MM would put a little crow on my plate.....
ID withholding must be 7.8 percent.
Attn: powerball, I'm really, really suspicious too. If you get my drift.