Millinocket Powerball winner has yet to step up

MILLINOCKET – Maybe it’s a Millinocket Regional Hospital nurse or janitor sleeping off an overnight shift.

It could be an employee at the Katahdin Paper Co. mill, or a town hall worker, or some quiet Maine Avenue tenant, or a camper getting an early start on the season at Cedar Lake.

All over town, residents wondered Thursday who had the $800,000 Powerball ticket purchased sometime Wednesday and why that person hadn’t claimed the winnings.

By Thursday afternoon, no one had delivered the ticket to the Maine State Lottery building in Augusta or its purchase

point, Rideout’s Market on Somerset Street, said Gary Rideout, who owns the convenience store.

“Everybody is just really curious as to who it is,” Nola Welch of Millinocket, a Rideout’s clerk, said. “We don’t know who sold it or what time it was sold.

“We just know that we sold a winning ticket.

“And I know it wasn’t me,” Welch sighed.

Wednesday’s winning numbers were 5 28 32 34 53, and the Powerball number was 10, state lottery officials said. The Power Play multiplier was 4.

Wednesday’s winning ticket matched five numbers, and by choosing the Power Play option, the mysterious winner quadrupled the $200,000 prize.

Players have a year to claim winning tickets, lottery officials said. Customers at Rideout’s and around town chatted about who might have won. Lillian Lagassey, a diner at the Scootic Inn on Penobscot Avenue, had the most charitable thought.

“Hopefully it’s someone who needs it,” she said Thursday.

“This town has been down in the dumps for a long time, and a lot of people here could use that kind of help,” Lagassey added.

The Katahdin region, which Millinocket anchors, typically has an unemployment rate about twice the state average, and the town of about 5,200 residents has been hit hard by mill layoffs over the last several years.

That’s why Lagassey doubted that the most horrific possibility – that the winning ticket was forgotten, accidentally tossed into the trash or inadvertently washed in the laundry – has occurred.

“People here don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “If they buy a ticket, they hang onto it.”

Rideout believes the winner is likely a regular player, perhaps a neighborhood resident. His store is near the hospital, and Katahdin paper workers often buy tickets, smokes or deli sandwiches, he said.

Campers at Cedar, North Twin, South Twin and Jo-Mary lakes stop at Rideout’s before hitting the woods, but camping season doesn’t start for another month or two, Rideout said.

“I know in the past few days, I have only sold 300 or 400 Powerball tickets,” he said. “I am just guessing the winner is one of them.”

That Rideout’s sold the winning ticket isn’t surprising. State lottery officials told him last year that Rideout’s was Penobscot County’s biggest ticket seller, with more than $500,000 in annual sales,

Rideout said.

“We have had lot of $10,000 and $20,000 winners through the years,” Rideout said. “About three or four months ago we had a $20,000 winner. We carry every ticket there is going. On the instant tickets I think we’ve got 50 over there.”

Lottery ticket prices range from $1 to $50, and the store has a lot of regular players among its customers.

Rebecca Lewis of Millinocket buys a variety of tickets there every week or so after she gets off work at the hospital, where she is a nurse. One day last year, she won about $3,576 on Scratch and Pick tickets, she said.

“It’s a small community,” Lewis said. “There are a few people in the store that I don’t know.”

“The winner is out there somewhere,” Lewis added. “He or she is probably one of us.”