Night pressman wins big money on lottery scratch-off
Published: September 28, 2006
Tuesday was a million-dollar day for John Beard.
Beard, 55, a night pressman at the Times Record News, won $1 million on a “Deal or No Deal” Texas Lottery scratch-off ticket that he purchased Tuesday afternoon at the Happy Stop just off Interstate 44 in Wichita Falls.
The Burkburnett resident said it started off as just another day.
“I didn’t have enough gas to get to work, so I traded in my cans and got $30,” he said Wednesday evening. “I bought some gas at Double D’s in Burk and I bought a $3 ticket there. On the way to work, I rubbed it off and I was like, ‘Wow, $5. I’ll cash that in tomorrow.’ I put that in the console of my car.”
Beard, who has diabetes, said his “bad kidney” won’t let him go more than about 10 miles before he has to stop to use the restroom. He had to pull over just as he reached the Wichita Falls city limits.
“So I stopped at Happy Stop,” he said. “I handed her (the girl behind the counter) the ticket and said, ‘See how much I won?’ I ran to the bathroom and came back out. She told me I had won five bucks and I said, ‘I shouldn’t do it, but give me that Deal or No Deal.’ ”
It was something he did without thinking, he said, without even envisioning what was about to happen next.
“I went out to the car, rubbed it off, and I saw that I had five no deals, and there were five to rub off, so I thought I had won something. I thought at least I might make my money back,” he said.
He kept scratching and scratching and scratching until there was nothing left to scratch.
And then he knew.
“When I got done rubbing them off, the million was the only one left. I just sat there and stared at it for about 5 minutes,” he said.
He went back into the store and asked the clerk to run the ticket through.
“She brought me back the ticket and said, ‘John, I don’t know what you won, but it won’t accept the instant validation because this exceeds the cash out payment.’ I knew then that I’d won more than $599,” he said.
They both looked over the ticket, examining it up and down, backward and forward, top to bottom.
They both came up with the same conclusion.
“We looked at it and she said, ‘John, that’s a million dollar winner.’ I said, ‘That’s what I see, but I don’t believe it.’ ”
As soon as he got back into his car, he signed the ticket to ensure that he was the only one who could claim the prize, he said.
Beard proceeded down the road to work. He stopped at another convenience store to have them check it out, just to make sure something wasn’t wrong with the machine at Happy Stop.
He got the same million-dollar result.
Beard came into work at 8 p.m. and began showing the ticket to his co-workers.
“That’s a million dollar winner,” everyone kept telling him, he said. “I locked it up in my locker and tried to work. I was nervous all night.”
Then came the call to his wife, Sharon. He started crying the minute he started telling her about the ticket.
“I called my wife and told her, ‘I think I won a million dollars.’ She said, ‘John, you’d better not be bulls—tin’ me.’ ”
His tears assured her that he wasn’t. They cried together for a while, he said. Cried because 2006 has been such a hard year for them.
Earlier this year, Beard and Sharon were granted custody of their three grandchildren, ages 13, 11 and 10, he said. It had been a long, difficult road the couple had traveled with the children over the years.
“We’re raising our grandchildren. They all come with special needs,” he said. “They’ve been living with us off and on all their lives, but now it’s official.”
The couple had worried about making ends meet with the three young ones in the house, but they figured they would manage, Beard said, especially with help from Sharon’s mother, Charlyne Rozzell, 84, who lived with them.
But tragedy struck the family this September.
“My mother-in-law got real bad sick and died on Sept. 12,” he said. “She lived with us. Her social security was put in with us, but our outgo was still more than our income. We were robbing from Peter to pay Paul twice a month already.”
They buried Rozzell last Friday, and the couple both silently began to grow concerned about their financial future, Beard said.
“All last week, Sharon and I never discussed it, but we were both worried. How are we going to survive? How are we going to do this? The one thing that we have and always will have is that God will take care of us,” he said.
When Beard got off work early Wednesday morning at 4 a.m., he drove straight home. Sharon was waiting for him at the door.
They quickly began to write down all the numbers and examine the card. The result was the same each time.
A million dollars. A million dollars. A million dollars.
“She said, ‘John, that’s a million dollars.’ ”
They didn’t cry, he said. They didn’t say a word. The couple simply stared at each other in shock, in disbelief.
Beard drove to the Snappy Stop in Burkburnett around 5 a.m. to have the ticket examined again, just to make sure that he and the first store clerk, and the other store clerk, and all his co-workers, and his wonderful wife hadn’t made a huge mistake.
A huge, million-dollar mistake.
He handed the clerk behind the counter the ticket.
“I asked the woman there what that meant. I asked her to look at it and tell me how much I won. She started saying, ‘Woah, Woah, Woah, Woah.’ She walked out from behind the counter and came and hugged me. She called her mother, who was coming in at 5:30, and she came up, made copies of it and they were like, ‘John, you won a million dollars.’ ”
The Texas Lottery Commission office didn’t open until 6 a.m., Beard said, and he was too tired from working Tuesday night to stay up. He wrote down all the information and numbers for the lady at the Snappy Stop and told them to call him after they had gotten confirmation, he said.
After getting what Beard called “the runaround” from all the numerous automated dialing systems, he finally called the number on the back of the ticket at around 9:30 a.m.
“I finally got a hold of a real human,” he said. “I told her, ‘I’m sitting here, and I think I’m holding a million-dollar scratch off winner.’ She told me to turn it over and read the numbers on the bottom of the ticket.”
He did.
” ‘Now turn it back over and read those numbers to me,’ she said.”
And he did.
“I could tell by her voice that she was starting to get excited. She said, ‘John, there’s four numbers in a square. Read those to me.’ And I did and she said, ‘Mr. Beard, have you signed that ticket?’ and I told her I had and she told me to put it somewhere safe.”
And then she said the words he’d been waiting to hear for hours.
“She said, ‘You’ve won a million dollars,’ and I lost it,” he said, tears streaming down his face as he told the story one day later.
Beard and his wife spent the rest of the day on the phone with the lottery commission, the legal department, their own lawyer, and friends and family.
The ticket pays out $50,000 a year for 20 years, Beard said. After taxes, he’ll be bringing home around $37,500 a year from the lucky ticket.
“The rest of the day, I was in a daze. I told my wife, ‘We’re not going to blow this money. This is our retirement.’ It’s enough to make us comfortable. I’ll be able to pay off all my bills,” he said.
But Beard did make one little impulse purchase before coming to work Wednesday night. He stopped off at Pruitt Ford in Burkburnett and purchased a truck - a shiny, golden Silverado.
“For the first time in my life, I bought a brand new vehicle,” he said. “It only had two miles on it when I test drove it. Now it has 33.”
Beard and his wife will head down to Austin this weekend so that he can be at the lottery office first thing Monday morning to claim his prize.
Beard has no intention of changing his life or his work habits, he said Wednesday night. He worked at TRN from 1982 until 1990 and returned in 1999 to his spot as a night pressman.
“I came to work yesterday; I came to work today. I’ll be at work tomorrow,” he said. “I’m not planning on quitting my job, but I don’t have to worry every time I see the electric company truck drive by my house, or the water department, or the gas company,” he said, with a contented smile on his face.
A new, million-dollar smile.
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