Durbin Couple Wins One Million In Lottery Drawing
Durbin, WV – When Frank Proud and his wife Pat Adams Proud went out for breakfast on a recent Thursday morning, he says they had no inkling they were about to come into quite a bit of money. They were enjoying their usual morning breakfast at Trents General store in Bartow, when store clerk Francine Lambert announced that Lottery officials had notified the store that they had sold a winning $200,000.00 Lottery ticket. After finishing their breakfast, the Prouds quickly went home to check their tickets.
They discovered that one of her tickets matched five of the six numbers. They were one number away from winning the $125 million jackpot that night. Because the ticket was a Power play, they originally thought it would worth double the winning amount or $400,000.00. But Proud says they actually qualified for much more.
Rules for the Power Play game have recently changed. Now the winning amount is multiplied by the amount of matched numbers on the ticket. So instead of $200,000.00, they won one million dollars.
Proud says they won’t get one million dollars, as taxes will take about 36 to 40% of the winnings. When asked about what they will do with the money, his first response is not what you might expect.
“I want to buy a new roll of duck tape to fix the big rust spots on my car” says Proud, “my Subaru’s really running good right now. We’re going to look for a new car, but to Pat [a] new car is like, instead of looking for a 2002 model, we’re now looking at a 2006.”
He says they also want to think about how they can help their hometown of Durbin and surrounding communities in the northern part of Pocahontas County.
Proud says Lottery officials in Charleston offered counseling on fielding requests for their sudden wealth and even recommended going somewhere else until the excitement dies down a bit. But as a busy CPA in the middle of tax season, Proud says that isn’t an option. They did bring back a bag of Lottery goodies as a thank you to Francine Lambert, who sold them the winning ticket.
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