January 06, 2004
Did I say I lost MY ticket? I meant to say I lost YOUR winning ticket...
Well, after that moment of prayer about the ticket, the real lottery ticket holder has surfaced and claimed her loot.
I read this at
Reuters
today. I love their tag line, “Know. Now.”
CHICAGO (Reuters) - An Ohio woman on Tuesday collected a $162 million lottery prize, saying the winning ticket was in her hands all along and had not been lost, as another woman had claimed.
Rebecca Jemison, 34, of South Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland, produced the winning ticket and was awarded the prize. She elected to take a one-time $94 million payment rather than collecting the larger amount over a number of years.The jackpot in a multi-state drawing had gone unclaimed since Dec. 30. On Monday news leaked out that a woman had filed a police report saying she lost the ticket outside the store where it was purchased.
Elecia Battle, 40, said she was sure the ticket she lost when she dropped her purse was the winner. The disclosure prompted a number of people to descend on the area near the store to search for the supposedly missing piece of paper.
But Jemison told a news conference when she claimed the prize that she had played the winning combination of numbers previously.
“I knew the proof I had,” she said. While she was angered at first that someone else was claiming the ticket was their’s, she said, in the end “It didn’t bother me at all.”
She said the report of the lost ticket prompted her to come forward to claim the prize, and lottery officials said they believed she was the legitimate winner.
You know that I have to ask this question: Why did it take so long for the winner to claim the prize? I cannot imagine anyone delaying to claim $94 million dollars. Maybe the controversy over Ms. Battle’s claim prompted Mrs. Jemison to redeem her winning ticket.
UPDATE: Per an interview on CNN.com , Mrs. Jemison said that she first contacted her attorney and accountant prior to offically claiming the winnings, hence the aforementioned delay.
Posted by akvalley at January 6, 2004 03:56 PM | TrackBackJemison said she “went into shock” after learning she had won the jackpot, and came forward after making arrangements with a lawyer and an accountant. She said she tried to keep her win quiet, even going to work on New Year’s Day in order to avoid drawing attention to herself.
Jemison said she was angered by the claim that someone else had the winning ticket, but: “I knew … what I possessed. I knew the proof I had, so it didn’t bother me at all.”