A Chicopee, Massachusetts, resident became the largest single winner in American lottery history, hitting a $758.7 million jackpot on Powerball.
In a press conference at the Massachusetts State Lottery's Braintree headquarters, Mavis Wanczyk, 53, said she was leaving work at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield when she realized she had instantly become a multi-millionaire.
She phoned her workplace the next morning, she said.
"I called them, and I told them that I will not be coming back," Wanczyk said with a chuckle.
The numbers on Wanczyk's winning ticket were chosen specifically based on birth days, she said. Wanczyk, who has a 31-year-old daughter, and a 26-year-old son, said she plans to celebrate by staying out of the public eye as best she can.
Officials from the Massachusetts State Lottery initially reported that the winning ticket had been sold in Watertown. But by about 8 a.m., they corrected themselves, saying it was sold at Pride Station and Store on 27 Montgomery St. in Chicopee.
"The phone started ringing at 8, and we're surprised as anyone else," Bob Bolduc, owner of the Pride chain in Massachusetts and Connecticut, said in front of the Chicopee store.
That store will receive a $50,000 commission, Bulduc said, which he will donate to various charities in Western Massachusetts.
As TV cameras and news photographers hustled around the Pride gas station in Chicopee that sold the jackpot ticket, Tony Newbold walked in to make a quick purchase.
"I should have bought my ticket here, I might have been a little more lucky," Newbold said. "Here I am now, just to about to buy a little soda, because that's all I can afford, because I didn't win the jackpot."