Posted: Saturday, February 18, 2006 6:00 pm
All across Lincoln, residents can't help but notice how close they were to the sale of the biggest Powerball-winning ticket in U.S. history.
BY COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star
Dang, they say. Why didn’t they buy a ticket this time?
They were so close, so dang close to winning that huge jackpot. They were just two blocks away.
“I can’t believe it,” Robert Graves says. “It could have been me.”
He and Shan McKinley live at the People’s City Mission, the homeless shelter just two blocks away from the U-Stop on West O Street that sold the winning Powerball ticket a record $365 million ticket in Saturday night’s drawing.
Sunday afternoon, the two men started walking the white gravel road to the U-Stop. Their throats were dry. They wanted some soda or beer and they wanted to check out the crazy scene. They’d been watching the cars and TV vans and high satellite dishes rising above the roofline.
It’s the U-Stop where they go when they have money in their pockets to buy soda and cigarettes.
And to buy lottery tickets.
The winning Powerball ticket was sold Friday at 3:09 p.m.
McKinley and Graves stopped there Friday but didn’t buy a ticket.
It’s cool, the men say, hands in their pockets because of the cold. But it also hurts a bit because they were so close.
Dang. So close.
It could have been me.
That’s what many people around Lincoln were saying Sunday afternoon as word spread that the only winning ticket was bought here.
The ticket was sold at the U-Stop just west of downtown. It’s the U-Stop with the huge American flag out front that’s just over the O Street bridge. It’s the U-Stop where many people around Lincoln have stopped for gas and cigarettes. And lottery tickets.
The winning ticket was computer-generated, a quick pick. That means that anyone stopping at that U-Stop could have bought it.
No one has come forward yet to claim the prize. Surveillance cameras indicate that the winner was probably one of five people standing at the counter around that time, four men and a woman. One man, maybe in his 40s, wore a baseball cap. One man wore a Husker stocking cap. One man appeared to be elderly. One man wore a jacket with the name of a lumberyard on it, Carhart. The woman looked to be in her late 20s or early 30s with short dark hair.
No one can officially come forward until Tuesday morning at the earliest, lottery officials say. That’s when the office of the Nebraska Lottery opens. It’s closed today for Presidents Day.
According to the surveillance cameras, the clerk who sold the ticket was one of two women n a woman named Penney Fisher or Diana Nasseff.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Nasseff said Sunday afternoon, taking a break between customers at the front counter and interviews.
She said she didn’t know the five people on the surveillance tape by name but thinks they’re people who come in there every so often, not the everyday customers.
The store sold 795 Powerball tickets Friday, acting manager Kelly Bowen said.
Here’s what happened Sunday morning:
Stacey Carey, a part-time clerk, came to work a little before 6 a.m. She checked the Powerball machine and saw an instant message at 7:02 a.m. saying that the winning ticket had been sold at the U-Stop. She waited about an hour to call anyone because she didn’t want to be rude and wake them. She called Kelly Bowen. About 7:40, Bowen called U-Stop owners Mick and Wendi Mandl at their home in south Lincoln.
Mick woke to Bowen’s voice on the answering machine. She was screaming. He thought something bad had happened at the store, like a robbery. He hurried to his home office and picked up the phone.
Excited, he cut his ear while shaving in the shower.
After calling the Mandls, Kelly Bowen called the two clerks who might have sold the ticket. Diana Nasseff was sitting on her couch at her rented home off Cornhusker Highway, making a grocery list.
“I started shaking and crying,” she said.
Nasseff said she’d share any tip with the other clerk.
“I’m not thinking about the tip. You can’t get your hopes up. It’s just cool that me and Penney can make someone happy.”
Here’s what’s next in the process: Once the winner contacts the Nebraska Lottery office, people there will validate the ticket. They have ways to ensure it’s real. For instance, lottery officials can tell if the paper of the ticket was the same paper stock of this U-Stop. Each retailer has a different code in their ticket paper.
After paying taxes, the winner will take home $124.1 million.
The U Stop will receive $50,000, Mick Mandl said.
It’s a blessing, he and his wife said, because this store, one of five U-Stops they own, is going to lose a lot of business when the O Street bridge is rebuilt. Mick expects the store to lose 85 percent of its business.
Dang, he told Wendi Sunday morning, joking now we may lose a good employee if the winner tips a huge amount.
Wendi, a third-grade teacher at Rousseau Elementary, brought her digital camera. They own five U-Stops. She keeps a scrapbook for each.
Usually this store is only known as the U-Stop with the huge flag. Now, she said, it’ll be known as the “Home of the Record Jackpot” and maybe they should put a sign out front as big as the flag.
She hopes the winner is a local person, someone who wants to give back to the community. Many homeless people from the Mission come in here, Wendi Mandl said, as do people who live under the bridge. They are good people.
“Wouldn’t it be a great story,” she said, “if one of them won the ticket.”
Sunday afternoon, a man standing near the City Mission yells to two men walking toward the U-Stop.
“You buy the ticket?”
“No!” they yell back.
And Robert Graves and Shan McKinley keep walking, shoes crunch on the gravel as they head toward their usual stop for some soda and beer.
It’s cool. But in a way, they say, knowing it was so close almost makes it harder to swallow.
“Who knows?” McKinley says, grinning. “Maybe we’ll bump into the winner there. And it might be a friend of mine.”
Dang.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.