A central Iowa man is the first in the state to win the highest level of the multi-state “Lucky for Life” lottery game.
Sixty-four-year-old Shelby Willis of Des Moines won the top prize of $1,000 a day for life in Friday’s drawing. Willis checked the numbers Saturday morning. “The numbers kept coming out. I was like, Yeah, that’s the two. That’s the seven. And first, when I first read it, I thought the 19 was a 16. So I had to reread the ticket again to make sure that I was looking at it right. And sure enough, there were all five numbers and the lucky ball,” he says.
Willis says the clerk was surprised when he went to the Quick Trip Saturday where he bought the ticket. “Looked like her face literally fell off. Her jaw dropped, and then she got just the biggest smile on her face, and she called her manager down. And the manager came and scanned it,” he says Willis is an Air Force veteran, so he wasn’t upset about having to wait until today to cash in the ticket as the Lottery Headquarters was closed Monday for Veterans Day.
Willis is taking a lump sum payout $5.75 million dollars. “I always knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t really realistically think that, you know, it would happen to just bam, just like that, that it would happen this way. I never thought that that would happen, but it did. So I just got blessed,” Willis says. He quit his job at a security firm Saturday after learning he had won, and says the prize helped him retire. “Well, I can relax a little bit now. I don’t have to be so concerned with finances, and I’ll be able to afford few little trinkets here and there from myself and my grandkids,” he says, “maybe go on a cruise or something. I’ve never done that. I’d like to do that.”
Willis was born in Iowa and spent most of his life on the East Coast before returning to the state 12 years ago. He says he is interested in buying a home in New Jersey to get closer to his family. There have been 22 other Iowa winners in the game, but they all won the second-place prize of $25,000 a year for life.