Powerball: Hollywood woman claims $73.8 million ticket in Royal Palm
South Florida has its first Powerball winner.
Elizabeth Choras-Hanna, 35, of Hollywood, claimed the $73.8 million prize, on Friday afternoon, the Lottery's Jackie Barreiros said Saturday.
The winning ticket was sold at a Royal Palm Beach Publix on July 10.
Choras-Hanna chose to take a one-time, lump-sum payment of $38,929,055.11 for the July 10 jackpot.
Elizabeth is an out-of-work medical assistant, lottery officials said. She was accompanied to Lottery headquarters by her twin sister, Alexandra, a firefighter and paramedic, and Alexandra's husband, a retired firefighter (well, if he wasn't retired before, he sure will be now). The three said they plan to share the money. No word on what the heck she was doing in Royal Palm, but they did give us this quote, so I'm guessing the sister lives up there:
"Alexandra’s husband was out of town so we decided to pick out a DVD from the movie rental box and while we were waiting for the movie I went to buy the tickets,” she said. “The next day I went to another Publix and had them check my tickets and discovered our ticket was the jackpot winner.”
Powerball came to Florida in January 2009 and had a winner last year. Dr. William Steele of Orlando hit for $189 million after buying a ticket on Oct. 3.
NICK SORTAL began playing 3-card "gut" and "Indian poker" on high school band trips, moved on to "night baseball" and "pass the trash" during a Dr. Pepper-infused midnight game in the 1980s at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and now play in a regular neighborhood Hold 'Em game in Plantation. I have been given the assignment of writing about the gambling life in South Florida casinos for the Sun-Sentinel...which means sitting around watching poker on TV now counts as research.
