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| Powerball winner Gloria C. Mackenzie, 84, left, leaves the lottery office escorted by her son, Scott Mackenzie, after claiming a single lump-sum payment of about $370.9 million before taxes on Wednesday, June 5, 2013, in Tallahassee, Fla. Officials say she is the largest sole lottery winner in U.S. history. She did not speak to reporters outside lottery headquarters, leaving in a silver Ford Focus with family members. |
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
(AP) -- An 84-year-old Florida widow who bought her Powerball
ticket after another customer let her get ahead in line came forward
Wednesday to claim the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in history:
$590 million.
Gloria C. MacKenzie, a retiree
from Maine and a mother of four who lives in a modest, tin-roof house in
Zephyrhills, where the lone winning ticket in the May 18 drawing was
sold, took her prize in a lump sum of just over $370 million. After
federal taxes, she is getting about $278 million, lottery officials
said.
She did not speak to a crowd of
reporters outside lottery headquarters, leaving quickly in a silver Ford
Focus with her son and family friends. She was accompanied at the
lottery offices by two unidentified attorneys.
MacKenzie
bought the winning ticket at a Publix supermarket in the town of about
13,300, which is 30 miles northeast of Tampa. It is best known for the
bottled spring water that bears its name - and now, for one of the
biggest lottery winners of all time.
The $590
million was the second-largest lottery jackpot in history, behind a $656
million Mega Millions prize in March 2012, but that sum was split, with
three winning tickets.
In a statement read by
lottery officials, MacKenzie said she purchased the ticket after
another buyer "was kind enough to let me go ahead in line." MacKenzie
let the lottery computers generate the numbers at random. She said she
also bought four other tickets for the drawing.
"We
are grateful with this blessing of winning the Florida Lottery
Powerball jackpot," the statement said. "We hope that everyone would
give us the opportunity to maintain our privacy for our family's
benefit."
The winner had 60 days to claim the
prize. Lottery spokesman David Bishop said MacKenzie, her lawyers and
her financial adviser spent about two hours going through the necessary
paperwork.
"They had clearly been preparing for this. They took all this time to get everything in order," Bishop said.
Minutes
after the announcement, a dozen reporters in Zephyrhills were camped
outside MacKenzie's gray duplex, which backs up to a dirt alley and is
across from a cow pasture.
Neighbors were surprised by her good fortune.
"She
didn't say anything about it. She's so quiet and secluded. She's
usually in the house," said James Hill.
"I'm very happy for her. It
couldn't have happened to a nicer person. She was always pleasant and
smiling."
Another neighbor, Don Cecil, joked, "I hope she gets a better place to live."
MacKenzie's
neighbors offered few details about her life. They said she mostly kept
to herself, but they've seen her take short walks along the street and
exchanged pleasantries with her.
Her house,
situated among mostly mobile homes and pre-fabricated houses, has a
chain-link fence with a sheet-metal roof and an old TV antenna.
MacKenzie retired to Zephyrhills more than a decade ago from rural Maine with her husband, Ralph, who died in 2005.
Back in her hometown of East Millinocket, Maine, relatives and friends were surprised to hear of her good fortune.
Robert
MacKenzie, Ralph's brother, said the couple met just after World War II
after Ralph got out of the Navy. He went to work in the town's paper
mill, laboring as a technician for almost four decades.
He
said the couple raised four children in East Millinocket, a town of
less than 2,000 people in northern Maine. A daughter and son still live
in East Millinocket, another son lives in Florida and another daughter
lives out of state, possibly in Massachusetts, he said.
Robert MacKenzie said he didn't know his sister-in-law had won until a reporter called him.
"Holy
mackerel," he said when told of her winnings. He added: "It hasn't
soaked in, but I'm happy for her.
That would be great because she's a
widow and she can have a nice home now."
One
of the MacKenzies' daughters, Melinda "Mindy" MacKenzie, a high school
teacher, still lives in the family home in East Millinocket in a quiet
middle-class neighborhood of white clapboard houses.
Ralph
MacKenzie enjoyed snowmobiling, hunting and fishing, said Andrew
Hopkins, a retired high school teacher and assistant principal who
taught some of the MacKenzie children.
"They were good people. That's about all I can tell you," said Hopkins, who lives across the street.
