Advertisement
She can’t dream because she hasn’t been able to sleep for a couple of days.
She’s played the lotto for as long as she can remember. She might have won $3 here or even $25 from a scratch-off game but never big money. She’s also a veteran of the 40-mile commute from Kellogg to Rochester, Minn., where she works at Mayo Clinic. She frequently stops by the Cenex convenience store in Plainview, Minn., for gas, pop, a quick bathroom break and the occasional lottery ticket. Before Christmas, she bought eight Minnesota Millionaire Raffle tickets, and didn’t think much about it. The tickets went on the refrigerator, held by a magnet, behind the photo of her son.
Until Wednesday.
That’s when she discovered she was a winner, and her sleeplessness began.
“The best part of this whole thing was handing the ticket over,” Nolan said. “That’s a lot of stress to be carrying that around.”
Nolan discovered she’d won when she checked the winning numbers during a break at work. None of the smaller $500-prize numbers looked familiar; but that one under the $1-million category looked odd. She called her mother in Rochester, sure that it was just coincidence. When she arrived home Wednesday night, she took the numbers and carefully compared them. It sure looked like a match.
She got up from the table, went to another room and then came back.
The numbers still matched.
So she left again. And came back.
They were the same.
“I called my mom to tell her and I started freaking out. After I got over being hysterical, I got in the car and drove to her house (in Rochester),” Nolan said.
The normal 40-minute drive seemed like it took “four hours.”
When she arrived, her mother’s husband read the numbers, took off his glasses, went to get another pair and then pronounced it a match.
She went to work on Thursday, trying hard to act as if nothing had happened. After all, no one had validated the ticket.
On Friday, she was invited to Roseville, Minn., where the lottery offices are located. Officials told her to arrive at the office at 11 a.m. She was there by 10.
Nolan had been tossing and turning on Thursday night, even though she felt dead tired. She spent the night watching the hours tick by, midnight, 2:30 a.m., then 5 a.m.
She doesn’t have big plans for the money. She said she’ll still go to work and her kids will still go to daycare. She’ll put some money into the house she just bought last year.
And maybe a new car.
“I drive a 1993 Chevy Cavalier. It has 201,000 miles on it,” Nolan said. “People might see me in a different car.”
She bought the Chevy new n with seven miles on it, so it has sentimental value.
“Other than that, I am just looking for consecutive hours of sleep,” Nolan said.
Something that not even $1 million can buy.
