Thursday, May 20, 2004
The husband said another customer gave him the idea to buy tickets for two drawings.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Pure serendipity -- a detour around some bridge work and a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy tickets early for the May 8 Powerball drawing -- made Steven and Kristine White multimillionaires.
The Skillman, N.J., couple bought the only winning ticket for the largest jackpot in the 32-year history of the Pennsylvania Lottery -- a one-time payment of $110,230,721, minus 25 percent federal tax withholding.
Steven White, a vice president of a small New Jersey meat company, bought the ticket May 5 in Washington Crossing, Bucks County, at a Cumberland Farms convenience store not far from the spot where George Washington crossed the Delaware River in 1776.
Different route
The couple, whose home state does not participate in the Powerball lottery, said they buy Powerball tickets infrequently and only when the jackpots get big. Steven White said they normally cross the Delaware River into New Hope, but took an alternate route because of bridge work there.
"That [Lambertville] bridge has been under construction so, out of the blue, we said 'Let's go over Washington's Crossing,'" he said, "and the Cumberland Farms was the first place we saw" where Powerball tickets were available.
Steven White, 40, originally planned to buy tickets only for the drawing on May 5 -- a Wednesday -- but was inspired to expand his bet when the customer in front of him bought $3 in tickets for both the May 5 and the May 8 drawings.
"I said, 'What a great idea. I will too.' Otherwise I would not have bought the ticket for Saturday night. I wouldn't even have thought of it," he said.
The Whites didn't immediately think of checking whether they won the Saturday night drawing. They spent the next day -- Mother's Day -- at the shore with the ticket stub stuck in their car's visor.
They didn't realize their good fortune until the following day, after Mrs. White, a geriatric nurse, learned from a co-worker that the winning ticket had been bought at a Cumberland Farms store in Bucks County. By that night, the giddy truth was beginning to sink in.
"The first night, we were up all night. We didn't sleep a minute. I checked the ticket probably about, oh, 400 times," Steven White recalled.