The winner of Iowa’s latest PowerBall prize came oh-so-close to hitting the big jackpot, but he’s content.
Seventy-nine-year-old David Branam of Adel bought his ticket last Friday and learned later his numbers matched all five white balls in the drawing Saturday night but not the orange PowerBall. He buys tickets fairly regularly. “Usually about once a week, that’s if the jackpot’s big enough,” Branam says. “Sometimes I don’t. It just depends.”
Lots of ticket-buyers have a secret wish-list for what they’d buy in event of a big jackpot, but Branam says he’s not one of those. “We’re putting it into some stocks and bonds and that’s the way it’s going to be,” he says. “Gonna live just like I always did. Not even go on a cruise.” Branam admits he did take his wife out for a very nice lunch today.
Branam says he’d heard that if you have a winning lottery ticket, you should sign it to prove ownership, so he did that and then tucked it away for safekeeping in his hearing aid box. Today (Monday) he took that signed ticket to the lottery office to claim $800,000.
The Iowa Lottery’s Tina Potthoff says the ticket just missed being worth more than $100 million by a single digit. The ticket was sold at Kum & Go in Adel. Potthoff says it was the only ticket sold in Iowa to match the five white balls, but missed the Powerball. Because the player also purchased the “Power Play” option, the normal $200,000 prize was multiplied by four.
Potthoff talked to the Adel store manager this morning and he thought he knew who the winner was but didn’t revealing the person’s identity.
The winning Powerball numbers for Saturday’s drawing were 14-40-47-54-55. The Powerball was 6. The Power Play multiplier was 4. Since no one correctly matched all six numbers in Saturday’s drawing, the Powerball jackpot is expected to grow to an estimated $135 million for Wednesday.