Virginia Lotto Winner

$5,350,000 JACKPOT WON IN VIRGINIA

On June 16, 1992, W.M., Jr. from Northwest, Virginia, wrote me the following letter: "Dear Gail, Using your book, Lotto How to Wheel a Fortune, helped me win the jackpot plus six other five number prizes (on May 9). I have enclosed several newspaper articles for your review. I would like to join your jackpot winners' club and look forward to meeting you at your next winners' party. Again, thank you!!! Sincerely, W.M., Jr."

W.M., Jr. beat odds of 7 million to 1 to win Virginia's Lotto 6/44 plus he beat odds of 30,960 to 1 for EACH of the five second prizes he won in the same drawing. The jackpot stood at $10.7 million the night he called the lottery hotline from work for the winning numbers.

When he realized he hit the jackpot, W.M., Jr. said, "I screamed and cried at the same time. I felt scared, but very excited, bewildered, weak, nervous, shocked . . . I ran around the lunch room table like a caged rat and fell down on my knees crying."

"The night time security guard at my job came around, wondering what was going on. I told him I had just won the lottery. The security guard said,'Yeah, right.' and walked away." W.M., Jr. quickly covered by saying he was just joking, and told no one else about it for a week. During that time, he saw a lawyer, made out a will, got an accountant and financial planner.

W.M., Jr. kept on working, and while he was working he said he wore shades because he was so often breaking into tears of joy . . . so happy that this had happened to him. He gleefully cut out newspaper articles about the mysterious winner who had not yet come forward to claim a half share of the $10.7 million prize.

Also, he wanted time to break the news gently to his parents so they wouldn't go into shock. Finally, one day, he said, "Mom, I've got something to tell you. Sit down. You know that Lotto jackpot that someone hit a month ago? It was me!

She said. 'What?' She couldn't believe it. But she was calm. She said, 'I kind of suspected something was going on but that you were afraid to tell me because I might faint or something.'"

"Then I broke the news to my father and my brothers and sister. I told them that we needed to first of all get business taken care, move out of this neighborhood and then claim the prize. We packed up and moved out of the neighborhood into an apartment.

"When the news hit that I had won, neighbors told us it was like a parade on our street. We had anywhere from ministers coming by asking for donations to people we didn't even know to old girlfriends from high school. It made front page. People just came out of the woodwork. It was interesting. I got letters from people I didn't know."

W.M., Jr. used his first year's check from the lottery to buy a house for his parents, which is something he had always wanted to do. He says he is stil the same old W.M., Jr., drives the same car and tries to stay low key in spite of his celebrity status, which even reflects on his parents and sister and three brothers.

W.M., Jr., a 33-year old bachelor, is a cartoonist by trade. He is in the process of completing a humorous book, illustrated with cartoons, about his jackpot winning experiences. It sounds exciting and fun.

Ken Dickkerson and I now share a second jackpot winner. W.M., Jr. bought Ken's book, How To Win At Games of Chance, and in it he read about my book, Lotto How to Wheel a Fortune, and ordered it. W.M., Jr. used my book for just one month before he won his $5.35 million jackpot and five second prizes. He used information from Ken's book for mapping out his biorhythms and to pick lucky personal numbers and kept the combinations in his wheel within my Balanced Game^® sums.

"I feel that if it wasn't for ordering your book, Lotto How to Wheel a Fortune, I don't think I would have won the jackpot. People used to tease me a lot about it. At work I had your big book on Lotto. People would say, 'What are you trying to do, study the Lotto?' Everybody, once they found out what happened, asked 'Where can you get that book from?"

W.M., Jr. has some advice for lotto jackpot winners: "You have to have something else to keep you going from day to day. You can't have an idle mind. You get tired of shopping, eating out all the time, spending, spending, spending. You have to have something to do with your life. I recommend to anyone who wins a jackpot, to find something they always wanted to do, even if it's just volunteer work, but keep yourself occupied and busy. Or you start wondering. 'What's life all about?' It's all about the comfortable life and living the American Dream. But if you don't keep busy, you'll just get into trouble."