Single mum lost winning ticket after scooping $275 million lottery
A single mother who won almost $275 million in Powerball reveals the moment she discovered her winning ticket was lost after the jackpot was drawn.
After hearing someone from her city had won half of a $954 million Powerball jackpot, Lerynne West couldn’t find the ticket she’d bought the day before while out with her sister, so called to ask her sister to check her ute.
There it was, on the vehicle floor — a scrap of paper worth many millions. Her sister sent Ms West a picture of the ticket. She checked her numbers to realise she’d won the jackpot.
“I told my sister to get in her truck and get that ticket and get up here right now! And, drive slow,” Ms West said.
The win was a shock for the single mum from Iowa, US, who struggled to persuade her three daughters and other relatives that it was for real.
“Nobody believed me,” Ms West said Monday after submitting her winning ticket at lottery headquarters in suburban Des Moines. “They thought I was crazy.”
Ms West will share the $954 million jackpot drawn October 27 with someone who bought the other winning ticket in New York City, but hasn’t claimed the prize.
Ms West took the cash option, which will pay her an immediate $274.7 million, less taxes.
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The 51-year-old said she dreamed of winning a jackpot, but “once you have won, you realise the responsibility and the impact you can make, and all the frivolity goes out the window.”
She said she’ll give some to her daughters and other relatives, ensure her six grandchildren can have college educations, and set up the Callum Foundation, where people in need can seek financial help. Halting briefly to hold back tears, Ms West said the foundation was named after a grandson born prematurely in April who lived only one day.
Ms West also plans to buy a new house and replace her “beaten up” Ford Fiesta.
Ms West said she grew up in a “very humble family” with seven siblings in Iowa and knows what it’s like to struggle financially. She worked in corn and soybean fields as a teenager, didn’t graduate from high school but took night classes to get a college degree in human resources in 2006.
She worked at a health insurance organisation until winning the jackpot. “Currently, I’m retired,” she said.
Ms West bought the ticket in Redfield, a community of 800 people about 50km west of Des Moines. “I played the lottery twice a week, when I had the money to do it,” she said.
Ms West and the buyer of a ticket at a Manhattan deli overcame odds of 292.2 million to one to win the Powerball.
