Pennsylvania Lottery: Longtime lottery player's $36 million ticket is worth the waitEver since she turned 18, Tanya Belair has played the Pennsylvania Lottery's jackpot games with mind-numbing regularity.
She long ago stopped checking her $5 tickets after each drawing. Instead, the 29-year-old biologist from North Londonderry Twp., Lebanon County, stockpiled her chances in a box, checking them en masse when the piles got too big.
But that routine was interrupted Oct. 19 when her dad, Frederick, showed her a newspaper report that the winning Super 6 Lotto ticket from the previous Friday had been purchased at a Turkey Hill convenience store in Campbelltown. It was the store where Belair had played.
She wrote down the numbers and checked her stacks.
Her life changed forever.
Belair had matched all six numbers that she had let the Lottery's computers pick for her. She beat odds of one in 39,959,158.
"I was shaking, and I had to read it several times," Belair said. "Then I was like, 'Dad, I think I won the lottery!'"
"I had to hold her hand to look at it," Frederick Belair, a retired pipefitter, said. "She was shaking that bad."
Yesterday, the rest of the world learned of Belair's good fortune. State officials presented Tanya with a lump-sum check for $36,184,544, after 25 percent federal withholding, rather than a $61 million, 25-year annuity
The $61 million jackpot was the sixth-largest in Pennsylvania Lottery history.
The timing makes Belair's win all the sweeter. The Palmyra High School and Towson University graduate who lives with her parents was scheduled to be laid off from her job at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Marietta in December.
"Now I have a new job," the beaming Belair said yesterday as her dad, mother Gloria, and brother Brian looked on. "Money management."
Belair said that at some point she will likely realize her longtime wish to tour Australia. Beyond that, she said her only immediate plans are to work with a team of financial and legal advisers to invest her winnings.
"I always said I'd win someday," Belair said. "I figured I'd be 90, but ..."
The winning ticket was sold by Leigh Gallagher, a clerk at the Campbelltown store. She attended yesterday's ceremony. Turkey Hill officials said she'll get a company bonus.
Super 6, introduced in 1998, was the Lottery's premier jackpot game until last year, when Pennsylvania joined the multistate Powerball game. Belair's was the first jackpot win since last November, when a Bucks County man won a $27.1 million annuity.
