One lucky person has gotten a $1 million piece of what’s become the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history, and the winning ticket was sold in Chattanooga.
A Mapco on Cummings Highway sold the Powerball ticket to someone who has not come forward to receive the prize. However, the real fireworks may come on Saturday, since that ticket missed just one of the numbers, leaving the pot to grow even larger.
The current Powerball jackpot has swollen to an estimated $700 million, and that record amount likely will go up as buyers flock to get a piece of the action.
Lottery officials say the odds are 1 in 292.2 million of winning the jackpot, but plenty of Chattanooga residents have purchased tickets in preparation for Saturday’s drawing – especially after the local win on Wednesday night.
Gin’a Wade, a sales clerk at Kangaroo Express on Browns Ferry Road, said lottery fever is real and ticket sales at her location and others have been exploding.
“People are buying them like crazy,” she said. “It’s insane.”
Wade said more than one person has come in to spend as much as $60 just on Powerball tickets that sell for $2 each. Employees at other convenience stores said they have seen similar trends and sold a huge number of tickets over the past week.
A Mapco store manager, Elizabeth Vandergriff, said her store sold $800 in tickets on Wednesday alone, and that was when the drawing was for a $450 million jackpot. She said she is playing this week, a rarity since this ticket is only the second one she’s ever bought.
But the pot is drawing in even first-time buyers looking to strike it rich.
Nineteen-year-old Kaylee Cravey said, “I’ve always wanted to play, but I never knew how to fill out the slips.”
If she wins, the Chattanooga resident plans on buying a Dodge Charger and a house.
Other players have similar dreams about how they would spend the money, from paying off household bills or school loans to taking a trip to Vegas.
Jason Smith, also of Chattanooga, said he normally doesn’t play unless the pot escalates and the potential reward starts to outweigh the risk for him. He hopes to finish building a house with his wife and pay off the bills.
“$700 million? Now you’ve got my attention,” Smith said.
John Miller said if he wins, he and his family are packing up and “moving to Hawaii. We’re done.”
Miller said he and his family are from Chicago and were on their way back home from Universal Studios in Orlando when he saw billboards along the highway advertising the enormous prize.
He said they decided to stop in Chattanooga to “grab some gas, go to the bathroom and, of course, buy some tickets.”
The upbeat father added, “Hopefully, this will be my lucky day.”
Miller isn’t the first person from out of state to play.
Powerball is played in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. As the total grows, residents of those states without Powerball migrate across state lines to play. Alabama and Mississippi are among the six states that don’t participate.
Tracy Hutcheson, a contractor who is doing construction at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said “everyone and their mother” back home in Mississippi had been texting her ticket orders.
Alabama residents reportedly have been crossing the Florida state line en masse to buy tickets, and the same trend can be seen along its boundaries with Georgia and Tennessee.
But even with the astronomical odds they face and the huge number of people playing, plenty of Chattanoogans are keeping their fingers crossed.
Wade said that if she had the money in front of her, she would put her 15-year-old son through the University of Alabama.
“He would go to school and have a bright, bright future. Brighter than me.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731.