A 69-year-old Webster City woman has won the 12-thousand dollar jackpot in a Lottery game she designed. Alice Hayes won a contest to design a new lottery game from scratch. It’s called “Dream’n of Dollars. She picked up an entry form for the contest, but was ready to forget about it until inspiration struck. “I ran out and got my grandson’s colored pencils and came home, and thought of a headline,” Hayes says. “The headline lead to the couple there dreaming and then I thought: ‘What can I scratch off?’ And I thought: ‘Well, alarm clocks…because they scratch ’em off and scratch ’em off and wake up and win.'”
Hayes says she doesn’t really have a background in art or advertising, but has often bought Lottery scratch off tickets. She bought the winning ticket at a gas station, and used a penny to reveal the ticket’s winning combination. “I said to the gal (behind the counter) ‘I know I’ve got a winner,'” Hayes says. “They got real excited and verified that I did, and then I wanted to get out of there and show my husband.”
Hayes and her husband went to Lottery headquarters in Des Moines Friday to claim her 12-thousand dollar prize. “I think I’ll probably invest it,” she says. Iowa Lottery vice president Mary Neubauer says Hayes won the Lottery’s design a game contest last year. The artwork on the ticket shows a man and woman — a couple — who are under the covers with their eyes closed. The caption “Dream’n of Dollars” floats above their heads. Hayes won three-thousand dollars for designing the contest’s winning entry. That makes her total winnings from the game 15-thousand dollars.