Richland Safeway Sells Winning Ticket

By Molly Kelleher

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Summary

Someone's a multi-millionaire and they might not even know it. A lotto ticket bought in Richland hit the jackpot. Someone from the store on George Washington Way bought the winning ticket worth $8.8 million.

Story Published: Mar 16, 2010 at 6:11 PM PST

RICHLAND - Someone's a multi-millionaire and they might not even know it. A lotto ticket bought in Richland hit the jackpot.

On Tuesday, everyone was a buzz inside the Richland Safeway. At the Starbucks coffee counter, this barista is spreading the word.

Someone from this store on George Washington Way bought the winning ticket worth $8.8 million. And as of Tuesday, the winner had not yet stepped forward.

"We have Hanford workers who stop in so I've been asking them. I hope it's one of my customers," said Starbucks manager Jeannie Puskarich.

The news spread quick inside the Safeway, one woman grabbed her phone to call her husband, just in case.

"We're very happy about this," said Safeway store manager Nate Payne.

This is also a big win for Safeway. The company gets $88,000 for selling the winning ticket. And the manager thinks it might also bring in more lotto customers.

"You know things happen in threes and this is one so we could get additional winners from this store," said Payne.

Action News was curious: how lucky is this Safeway? We found out this is the first million dollar win for the Richland store. But in the past eight years,
4 tickets have been sold worth $10,000, one ticket was worth a $20,000 prize and another ticket was worth $75,000.

No chump change, but still nothing compared with this jackpot. That $8.8 million translates to about $3.3 million after taxes or a lump sum or $264,000 a year for the next quarter century.

That's a pretty nice payday for someone who probably just stopped in to grab some milk, eggs and a lotto ticket. Only this time a trip to Safeway really paid off.

Here's a look at the winning numbers: 5-14-19-31-35-45.

The Washington State lottery hopes if you're the winner, you'll come forward quickly since you lose potential interest earnings every day.

If you are the winner, sign the ticket, call the state lottery and then put it in a cool safe place away from heat. That's advice straight from the people who know best.