On Tuesday morning, Neil Sullivan of Hazel Dell drove his 4-year-old Chevrolet pickup down to a gas station and filled it up — the whole tank.
“It felt really good,” said Sullivan, 55, a cabinet maker who said he’s been out of work for nearly three years.
“It felt really good to be able to go and fill up the gas tank this morning. I couldn’t just do that before. I had to do it in increments.”
For Sullivan, ‘before’ means before he won $6.8 million Tuesday morning, on a $5 Lotto card he said he bought at the Safeway along Hazel Dell Avenue.
He said the sequence of numbers that won was the personal one he chose, and has played for the past three weeks, not the other random quick pick numbers on his ticket.
“They were just numbers that were very personal to my life,” Sullivan said during a press conference at Washington’s Lottery office in Hazel Dell. “Happy anniversaries, birthdays, that sort of thing. It makes me think that God was listening to my prayers.”
If that was the case, God threw in a little something extra. Sullivan said he’d thought the jackpot was $6.1 million, but at $6.8 million, he got about $700,000 more than he expected.
“That’ll pay about half the taxes,” he told news reporters.
If you like stories about down-and-out folks winning the Lotto, not well-heeled people who bought hundreds of tickets, Sullivan’s tale fits the bill.
Sullivan said he moved to Hazel Dell about 16 months ago, from Burlington in Skagit County, south of Bellingham, after losing his job. He said he moved here because a son and daughter of his live in this area.
“My unemployment benefits have been gone nearly two years,” he said.
He said he sold his home in Burlington and has been living off the proceeds of the sale, which were dwindling.
“To be honest, I was getting pretty scared,” he said. “I only had a few bucks in the bank before I was going to be indigent and need help.”
He said he’s been looking for jobs as a woodworker, the occupation he pursued for about nine years, or as a truck driver, with no success.
“I’ve had some rough times,” he said. “I’ve actually cried in my sleep and thought there wasn’t much out there for me.”
He said he’d planned to move to the Value Motel, into a $24-a-night room in Hazel Dell, so his son can have his apartment for his honeymoon with his soon-to-be new wife.
Tuesday morning, Sullivan said, he checked the Lotto on his computer, saw his numbers won, and put the ticket by the computer screen to make sure.
“I must have verified it four times before I was satisfied,” he said.
Then he printed the Lotto page and verified he’d won four more times.
“I told myself, ‘Breathe.’ I didn’t want to pass out or have a heart attack,” he said.
On the way to present the winning ticket at the lottery office, he worried someone might steal it from his truck.
“I was just one of 14 million unemployed,” he said. Now, “I’ve got a few more options.”
He said went through a divorce three years ago and doesn’t plan to tell his ex about winning.
With his son’s wedding coming up, he plans on giving him and his new wife something transportation-related, and some nice household gifts.
He took the lump-sum payment and said he plans to fulfill his dream of funding his retirement, and simplify his life, living “five minutes at a time.”
After stopping by a car lot for his son’s gift, he’s got his eye on a dark-gray 2006 Porsche Boxster, with only 42,000 miles, which he figures he can get for less than the $27,000 asking price by paying cash.
And he’s no longer planning to move to the Value Motel.
