Mavis Wanczyk Wins $758M Powerball Jackpot, Quits Job

'My pipe dream came true'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 24, 2017 2:13 PM CDT
Mavis Wanczyk Wins $758M Powerball Jackpot, Quits Job
Mavis Wanczyk, of Chicopee, Mass., smiles during a news conference where she claimed the $758.7 million Powerball prize at Massachusetts State Lottery headquarters, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017, in Braintree, Mass. Officials said it is the largest single-ticket Powerball prize in US history.   (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

"I called [my employer] and told them I will not be coming back," Fox News quotes Mavis Wanczyk as saying after claiming her massive $758.7 million Powerball jackpot on Thursday. USA Today reports it's the largest grand prize won with a single lottery ticket in US history. The 53-year-old hospital worker from Massachusetts says her "pipe dream came true." She bought the winning ticket Wednesday at a store in Chicopee and heard she was a winner while leaving work Wednesday night, according to CBS News. "I just want to sit back and relax," Wanczyk says. "I wanted to retire, and it came early." The executive director of the Massachusetts lottery calls Wanczyk "a prototypical Massachusetts resident ... someone who's a hard-working individual."

Meanwhile, the owner of the store where Wanczyk bought her winning ticket says he'll donate his $50,000 cut to charity. "It's really pretty amazing," Bob Boduc tells USA Today. "It could have happened anywhere in the country. It's really a stroke of luck." Forty other people won at least $1 million each in Wednesday's drawing, which followed 20 drawings in a row without a winner. Wanczyk's was the second largest Powerball jackpot in history; a $1.58 billion jackpot was shared by three winners in 2016. (More Powerball stories.)

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