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Lottery
- Thread starter One-Off
- Start date
Childhood friend of mine. His parents won $5-10 million in the early 1990's. They bought their only son a new car but still live to this day in the same modest house they lived in when he was a kid.
Secretary at my dad's office won $3-5 million. She doesn't work at the office any more.
Secretary at my dad's office won $3-5 million. She doesn't work at the office any more.
1. I have won about $20 over the years of playing with friends at work. We buy whenever it gets above a certain amount.
2. A friend of mine buys $40 worth 2x a week. He once won $500 or so, and still working towards retirement at 65-70 like so many of the rest of us.
3. In Reno with Friend #1. We go to Harrahs or something. I lose $20 quickly playing cards. As I enjoy my tasteless margarita, and look over his shoulder, Friend #1 wins $900 playing video poker. Straight flush. He cashes out and we leave.
4. Friend #36-22-38 and her husband attending some function in Las Vegas. He heads to the casino "to check things out". Plays the free house token for a free spin on the wheel of fortune or whatever that big comical wheel thing is that you spend the free house token on by the front door. But he spreads about $40 worth of $5 around, "to sweeten the win". Wins $36K. Casino takes the tax off the top, gives him the form and the check. Come back upstairs. Friend #36-22-38 says, "Already!?" She flips when he shows her the check. Upon returning to the Bay Area, try to add it to their stash to buy a house, but his father says, "Hold on to it for a while, the housing market is looking toppy...here, stay in the rental of ours for a while." Two years later, the dad dies. Step-mom asks them to leave, they try to buy it, but the house is in her name, seems dad had bought the rental for her back in the day so she could have some income without having a regular job, so they leave and she sells the place, moves to Florida. This was in 1999. They have not seen her since and live in an apartment in Los Gatos.
5. On a late winter trip to Death Valley, headed south on I-5, and just past a on ramp, what looks like US currency blows across the road. I ask sweetie-pie if she noticed it. She didn't. I pull over and then reverse back about a mile. i nearly back into a road sign in my haste. Hop out of the car. Money is blowing in the wind from west to east. It is a stiff, cold wind. I spy a shoulder bag on the side of the road. Yell, "Money!!! Get the bag! Quick!!" Sweetie moves with alacrity towards the bag as I dash about collecting $20s and a few $100s, jamming the bills in my pockets, then it hits me, how long as the bag been laying there? Where is the wind blowing? The median! Timing things, I dash across I-5 to the median and start scuttling about, grabbing more bills. There is a din in the distance, south, I think, "F8ckers have seen me collecting money, they're going to do what I did, reverse back and try to get my money!" Money money money...I can't move fast enough and some of it blows across the northbound lane. I think about running across another two lanes of 70-80 mph traffic and then it comes to me how foolish it is to run across interstate traffic once. If I go back, then it only means I've done it twice, and well, north bound does seem a lot more busy and what is that smoke rising from the the south, and there is sweetie-pie with the bag which I now see is really a woman's purse. I run back to her and let the money go...I cleaned up on the median after all, why push it? Back in the car, we start counting. The bills are new, but now severely creased by my handling (crumpling and stuffed in pockets). Sweetie-pie says, "There is about 3 or 4 grand here." "And ID," I mutter. Free money has just started to go away. Then I look up, and to the south, about a mile distant, maybe two, a car by the side of the road, three figures besides it. Are they walking north? "It's theirs, isn't it." She says, "Probably." We stuff the money back into the purse, put in all the credit cards, the make, the combs, the ID, the tickets to something in LA, all the crap she could find next to the purse, and we drive up to the them on the shoulder. Mom and two kids. Her face is the same on the ID. We hand them the purse, tell them where we found it. The mom makes some sounds in terribly hard to understand broken accented English. All I get out of it is "thank-you" and "where". Sweetie-pie point and try to explain things, but it doesn't seem to translate. I make motions with my hands and blow across them to hope they understand that the wind was blowing their money around, and there is probably another $500 or so to be found on the other side of the interstate. After a bit more of this, both parties come to the conclusion that further talk is getting neither of us any further. We drive off and feel bad for the woman who left her purse on the roof of her car while getting gasoline and had her vacation money scattered about I-5 on a Monday morning in January. About a mile later, there are three cars in the median, on upside down, one smashed in the front, one looks like it was side swiped. The cause of the din, I reckon. I sort of wonder if one of them saw me getting money and one thing led to another.....
2. A friend of mine buys $40 worth 2x a week. He once won $500 or so, and still working towards retirement at 65-70 like so many of the rest of us.
3. In Reno with Friend #1. We go to Harrahs or something. I lose $20 quickly playing cards. As I enjoy my tasteless margarita, and look over his shoulder, Friend #1 wins $900 playing video poker. Straight flush. He cashes out and we leave.
4. Friend #36-22-38 and her husband attending some function in Las Vegas. He heads to the casino "to check things out". Plays the free house token for a free spin on the wheel of fortune or whatever that big comical wheel thing is that you spend the free house token on by the front door. But he spreads about $40 worth of $5 around, "to sweeten the win". Wins $36K. Casino takes the tax off the top, gives him the form and the check. Come back upstairs. Friend #36-22-38 says, "Already!?" She flips when he shows her the check. Upon returning to the Bay Area, try to add it to their stash to buy a house, but his father says, "Hold on to it for a while, the housing market is looking toppy...here, stay in the rental of ours for a while." Two years later, the dad dies. Step-mom asks them to leave, they try to buy it, but the house is in her name, seems dad had bought the rental for her back in the day so she could have some income without having a regular job, so they leave and she sells the place, moves to Florida. This was in 1999. They have not seen her since and live in an apartment in Los Gatos.
5. On a late winter trip to Death Valley, headed south on I-5, and just past a on ramp, what looks like US currency blows across the road. I ask sweetie-pie if she noticed it. She didn't. I pull over and then reverse back about a mile. i nearly back into a road sign in my haste. Hop out of the car. Money is blowing in the wind from west to east. It is a stiff, cold wind. I spy a shoulder bag on the side of the road. Yell, "Money!!! Get the bag! Quick!!" Sweetie moves with alacrity towards the bag as I dash about collecting $20s and a few $100s, jamming the bills in my pockets, then it hits me, how long as the bag been laying there? Where is the wind blowing? The median! Timing things, I dash across I-5 to the median and start scuttling about, grabbing more bills. There is a din in the distance, south, I think, "F8ckers have seen me collecting money, they're going to do what I did, reverse back and try to get my money!" Money money money...I can't move fast enough and some of it blows across the northbound lane. I think about running across another two lanes of 70-80 mph traffic and then it comes to me how foolish it is to run across interstate traffic once. If I go back, then it only means I've done it twice, and well, north bound does seem a lot more busy and what is that smoke rising from the the south, and there is sweetie-pie with the bag which I now see is really a woman's purse. I run back to her and let the money go...I cleaned up on the median after all, why push it? Back in the car, we start counting. The bills are new, but now severely creased by my handling (crumpling and stuffed in pockets). Sweetie-pie says, "There is about 3 or 4 grand here." "And ID," I mutter. Free money has just started to go away. Then I look up, and to the south, about a mile distant, maybe two, a car by the side of the road, three figures besides it. Are they walking north? "It's theirs, isn't it." She says, "Probably." We stuff the money back into the purse, put in all the credit cards, the make, the combs, the ID, the tickets to something in LA, all the crap she could find next to the purse, and we drive up to the them on the shoulder. Mom and two kids. Her face is the same on the ID. We hand them the purse, tell them where we found it. The mom makes some sounds in terribly hard to understand broken accented English. All I get out of it is "thank-you" and "where". Sweetie-pie point and try to explain things, but it doesn't seem to translate. I make motions with my hands and blow across them to hope they understand that the wind was blowing their money around, and there is probably another $500 or so to be found on the other side of the interstate. After a bit more of this, both parties come to the conclusion that further talk is getting neither of us any further. We drive off and feel bad for the woman who left her purse on the roof of her car while getting gasoline and had her vacation money scattered about I-5 on a Monday morning in January. About a mile later, there are three cars in the median, on upside down, one smashed in the front, one looks like it was side swiped. The cause of the din, I reckon. I sort of wonder if one of them saw me getting money and one thing led to another.....
We suspect it was the girlfriend's husband that stole it. He was a major coke head and everyone was just starting to find out how bad he was. The following Monday he disappeared for two weeks. But not before emptying their bank accounts and stealing her jewelry. He was later arrested in Hollywood for prostitution. She filed for divorce as soon as she discovered the accounts were empty. Anyway, we figured he stole the ticket and used it to pay off a debt. Who knows what really happened with it?sussle said:nuts....no chance of tracking down the thief by whomever claimed the prize?SrPato said:Don't you fricken dare tell us you won. :cussing:
My parents threw a 25th birthday party for my wife and I. A girlfriend gave us a strip of scratchers. We won a trip to the Big Spin. Needless to say, we were beyond stoked. Foolishly, I put the winning ticket under the passenger seat of my car instead of in my parent's house. Or even my pocket for that matter. That night, my car was ransacked and the ticket stolen. To this day I still wonder how that win might have changed our lives.
my neighbor left a $50 winning scratch-off ticket on his car...somebody rifled his car and stole the ticket. the local police were like "oh, well", so he went to every convenience store in town (there's only about 5 or 6 on the island). sure enough, found the one where someone had just cashed a $50 scratcher and since the transaction was on video, he had only to call the fuzz and point them to the thief. i doubt he got the $50 back but he had the satisfaction of nailing the thief.
Many moons ago - a friend talked me into accompanying him to Santa Anita. I only had $20 in my pocket at time. Put a $2 ticket on the Daily Double and won $40. I then bought 3 Pick Six tickets. I hit the Pick Six on one and had 5 out of 6 on the other two. The two with 5 out of 6 paid $40 each. Prior to this the lowest i had ever seen the Pick Six pay out was over $10,000 - unfortunately on this day about 150 other people hit it and the payout ended up being around $2500. Not bad for starting out with $20 but what could have been.