THREE RIVERS, Mi. — The sole winner of a $310.5 million Powerball jackpot has come forward to claim her prize.
Julie Leach, 50, won Michigan’s second-largest total for that lottery game in the state’s history.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m just overwhelmed,” she said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
Leach wasn’t having the best day at work when she discovered that she was the winner.
"I was having a really bad night at work, and I thought I'd better check my numbers," she said, adding that she was "shaking" as she slowly realized that she had won. She said she went back to work, where she is a supervisor, to ask her co-workers to verify the numbers.
“I didn’t go to sleep for 30 hours when I found out,” Leach said.
She told her boss that she didn’t need a raise before quitting her job at a fiberglass company.
“I quit automatically. I was done,” she said. She said it was a “nasty, dirty job” that she held for more than 20 years.
Leach said she’s accepting the lump-sum cash option of $197.4 million.
After finding out that she won the jackpot, Leach said her partner of 36 years still wanted to work.
“He wanted to go to work," she said. "I said, ‘Are you crazy? We don’t have to work anymore.”
Leach said he has tried to propose many times and she has refused, pointing to their friends who have gotten divorced.
"I said he would have to sign a pre-nup now," she said.
With her new fortune, Leach hopes to buy property in Michigan for her whole family. She wants to take care of their children and 11 grandchildren.
“I’m going to take care of my kids,” she said. “I don’t want them to work the way I had to work and deal with the things I had to deal with in life. I want to make it a good life for them and take care of them.”
When asked what her grandchildren have said about the news, Leach said, “’Grandma’s rich.’ I heard that one.”
The ticket was sold at a Shell gas station in Three Rivers, Michigan, near the Indiana border.
The winning numbers were 21, 39, 40, 55, 59 and Powerball 17.
Michigan’s largest Powerball jackpot ever was $337 million, which was won by Donald Lawson on Aug. 15, 2000.
WSBTV
