“I don’t know what I’m going to do (with the money), but I’ll put it to good use,” Lang told us moments after being announced the winner. “I play the lottery a lot and never hit, but something like this — I waited in line for the past two days, 8 hours.”
The jackpot reached $1.65 million after starting at $1.3 million Wednesday morning. Lang will take home 90% of that total. The remaining 10% will be used to start the pot for the next raffle.
Lang said he and his wife, Sue, bought the winning ticket on Wednesday. In total, Lang said they spent $3,000 on purchasing raffle tickets for the game.
The winning Queen of Hearts was under card No. 50 from the game’s deck. Lang said he only wrote that number on six of his tickets.
The couple was sitting by their car a few blocks away when Lang’s name was called. With a 5-minute time limit to get to the drawing tent, Lang said it was a mad dash to cover the distance and the crowd.
Before Lang won, multiple other tickets were picked and were either unsuccessful or repeats of numbers already flipped. Heading into the night, there were four numbers — 36, 37, 39 and 50 — that the Queen of Hearts could have been.
What started out as a friendly bar game quickly evolved into a region-wide phenomenon.
“I mean, everyone wants to win, and a lot of them already have the money spent,” said Deanna Cooper, who has been working ticket sales for months. “They’re just happy.”
Patrons buy a ticket, and on that ticket, write their name, phone number and the number of one of the cards on their display board. The bar then randomly picks a ticket and turns over the card with the number corresponding to the ticket. If that card is the Queen of Hearts, the person who owns the ticket wins.
“It takes one ticket to win,” one patron, Cheryl Saylor, told us ahead of the night’s drawing. “It could be mine, you never know.”
Saylor had been buying $40 worth of tickets each week for months.
She was among thousands who had been standing in line for hours every day this week after learning the drawing would be over $1 million.
“We went, ‘Oh no,’” Saylor said. “It’s great, but at the same time, we didn’t have to deal with all these people, you know. It was just like a nice little party on the streets.”
Kallie Thatcher and Sandy Bonar were prepared with lawn chairs and water in hand to stay hydrated.
“We were No. 3 and No. 4 in line,” Thatcher said. “There was only two people ahead of us, but it’s been really nice because everybody has gotten along and it’s a good community.”
We asked people what they would do if they became the lucky winner. There were a lot of mixed answers from helping their families to taking care of those in need.
The demand for ticket sales was so high on Monday that Brookies was forced to shut down ticket sales. Now that they are back on, Cooper said they are drawing until there is one lucky winner tonight.
“Good luck to everyone, as long as it goes to someone in need,” Thatcher said.
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