Feb 26, 2008 - 04:05:39 CST
The elevator chimed.Its doors opened and two nervous people stepped out onto the 17th floor of the state Capitol, holding a glossy little slip of paper.
It measured 9 square inches. Slick to the touch. About the size of a convenience store receipt if all you bought was gum.
This little baby could have bought a whole lot of gum: $400,000 worth of minty fresh breath.
A Bismarck man and woman stepped up to the counter at the North Dakota Lottery office on Friday to claim their Powerball prize. Finally. It had been nearly a month since they'd purchased the ticket at a local gas station.
After taxes, each of them stepped back into the elevator with a check worth $138,920. It would have been interesting to watch the security footage of that ride back down to earth.
Unfortunately, that might be the only way to find out who the lucky winners are. They chose to collect their prize anonymously. So there's no answer to who won the $400K, but Friday's redemption at least ended four weeks of speculation as to what happened to the ticket.
"One of their first comments was 'This might clear up a few questions,'" lottery spokeswoman Donna Thronson said.
The two Powerball players bought the winning ticket Jan. 26 at Main Tesoro, with the agreement that they'd split any proceeds. But they forgot to check the ticket after that day's drawing - and the next drawing and the one after that.
It wasn't until they read a story about the unclaimed ticket in the Tribune that they fished it out and reviewed the numbers.
"Sometimes we don't check our tickets for weeks," one of them said, according to Thronson. "We couldn't believe we won. I kept checking the ticket again and again to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me."
The pair won the largest amount given out in Bismarck since the state got into the lottery game in 2004.
In those four years, 14 North Dakota players have won $100,000 or more playing Powerball. The largest prize won in this state was $1 million, claimed by Kevin Green, who drew the ticket in Williston in March 2006. The second-biggest amount was $600,000, claimed by an anonymous group of people in Lisbon in June 2006.
The Bismarck prize redeemed Friday is the third-largest total, Thronson said. The ticket matched every number but the Powerball, and with the Power Play option the prize doubled from $200,000 to $400,000. After the federal tax of 25 percent and the state's 5.54 percent take, the players were left with $277,840. At their request, the lottery office wrote two checks for $138,920 each.
Thronson said the winners didn't know what they were going to do with their money.
"They said they were just going to watch it for a while," she said.
The winning ticket just about equaled the amount of money North Dakota lottery players leave on the table each year. Thronson said players forfeit $7,554 a week by not claiming their prizes; that comes to $393,000 a year.
(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)
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