a winner lottery ticket, worth nearly $2 millionit came into the hands of an Iowa woman whose home was leveled by tornadoes 20 years ago, authorities said Thursday.
Tammy GordyA 56-year-old dietitian from Ottumwa bought his life-changing Powerball ticket at a Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh on Saturday, Iowa Lottery Vice President Mary Neubauer said.
Gordy had just finished breakfast on Sunday when she began cleaning out her bag and checking a few weeks’ worth of lottery tickets with the Iowa Lottery mobile app.
Amid the missing tickets, the app told him that the Powerball ticket he picked up Saturday was worth $2 million.
«I fell in my chair,» Gordy said in a interview with the Iowa Lottery. «I could not see! There were all those zeros! I was like, ‘Maybe I need my glasses.’ So yeah, we yelled.»
Steve Gordy said that his wife suddenly lost command of the English language at this time.
«He wasn’t sure what to think when he first looked at it and he jumped up and said, well, not in English, just other words he couldn’t understand,» the auto repair shop owner recalled. «Then I looked, and there were a lot of zeros.»
The couple’s lucky break came just over 22 years after their home in The agency was destroyed when a series of tornadoes devastated communities in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas on April 10 and 11, 2001.
“We were in the process of building a house and it was put on hold for a few years so now this will speed it up,” Tammy Gordy said.
“And it’s going to go into better detail! I’m talking about a dressing room and a jacuzzi! That’s what I’m talking about!»
The couple have been renting since the loss of their home, and the $2 million prize will go toward their new home under construction in Ottumwa, according to Neubauer.
Gordy took home $1.42 million this week: the $2 million prize minus $480,000 in 24% federal withholding and minus $100,000 in 5% Iowa tax.
He bought just one ticket on Saturday with randomly selected numbers and matched all five regular numbers, but not the final Powerball.
If Gordy had gone 6-for-6, that ticket would have been worth $424 million.