Woman Wins $150,000 Lottery Prize a Month After Losing Home

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
March 28, 2019US News
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Woman Wins $150,000 Lottery Prize a Month After Losing Home
LeAndra Clay poses for a picture after winning a $150,000 Powerball prize. (Arkansas Scholarship Lottery)

An Arkansas woman won a $150,000 Powerball prize just one month after losing her house to a fire, crediting God for the winnings.

LeAndra Clay bought the winning ticket in West Helena for the March 23 drawing.

“I first discovered that I was a winner Monday evening,” she told the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery. “Unfortunately I couldn’t double check my ticket due to the fact that I don’t have electricity in the shed where I’ve been living since my house was destroyed by the fire.”

When she was able to get online and double check the winning numbers on March 26, Clay’s first thought was: “He’s an on-time God.”

“I don’t have much family left and kept telling my friends that I have the faith of a mustard seed. I knew that God would bless me soon,” she added.

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LeAndra Clay poses for a picture after winning a $150,000 Powerball prize. (Arkansas Scholarship Lottery)

Clay said she was going to spend the money on a new house and car after she paid tithes, a Christian tradition of paying a certain percentage of the money one makes.

The lottery noted that Clay’s ticket would have been only $50,000 but it was tripled after she paid an additional dollar for the Power Play.

The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery funds prizes, scholarships, and retailer commissions.

Since 2009, the lottery had provided more than $781 million for more than 302,000 college scholarships.

It’s also provided more than $2.8 billion in prizes to players, about $242 million in retailer commissions, and more than $123 million in state and federal tax revenue.

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A woman buys a Powerball lottery ticket at a newsstand in New York City, on Jan. 12, 2016. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)
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A screen displays the value of the Powerball jackpot at a store in New York City, on Aug. 22, 2017. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Winning Ticket Sold

A day after Clay confirmed her win, the winning $768 million Powerball ticket was sold in Wisconsin.

The $768.4 million is the third-largest behind the world record $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot shared by winners in California, Florida, and Tennessee in January 2016, and the $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot won in South Carolina last October.

“It’s going to be a very green spring for our first Powerball jackpot winner of 2019,” David Barden, Powerball Product Group chairman and New Mexico Lottery CEO, said in a statement. “A jackpot of this size can make many dreams come true—not just for the winner, but for all Lottery beneficiaries and the lucky state of Wisconsin.”

Although the prize has grown steadily since the last jackpot winner on Dec. 26, the odds of matching the five white balls and single Powerball remain one in 292.2 million.

New York Lottery
New York Lottery Powerball tickets are displayed in a store in N.Y.C., on Aug 22, 2017. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
Powerball tickets
A customer purchases Powerball lottery tickets at a convenience store in Washington on Nov. 26, 2012. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

The $768.4 million estimated figure refers to the annuity option, paid over 29 years. Nearly all grand prize winners opt for the cash prize, which for Wednesday’s drawing would be an estimated $477 million. Both prize options are before taxes.

Seven tickets matched all five white balls, but missed matching the red Powerball in Wednesday’s drawing to win a $1 million prize. Those tickets were sold in Arizona, two in California, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey and New York. Two other tickets, sold in Kansas and Minnesota, matched all five white balls and doubled the prize to $2 million, because the tickets included the Power Play option for an additional $1.

Powerball is played in 44 states, plus Washington, D.C., the U.S Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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