Don Harvey’s long-haul truck had almost 2 million miles on it when its engine died this week. Now, he’s planning to ride the road in style, after winning a $105.8 million Powerball ticket with his wife.
Harvey and his wife, Joyce, said they will pay off bills, help family members and think about buying a new home with their winnings. They chose to receive a $33.3 million lump sum after taxes instead of the full amount paid out over 29 years.
The ticket was purchased at a Shell service station in Roland, about five miles east of Muldrow where they live in eastern Oklahoma, almost on the Arkansas border. It was a quirky thing that she won, she said, because she always had bought lottery tickets using the same numbers.
She said she recently bought a ticket, but the numbers “came out wrong.” She said she decided to use those same numbers when she bought the ticket in Roland and bingo, it was a winner.
Joyce Harvey said she was in “absolute disbelief and shock” when she checked the numbers on her computer Thursday night and found she had the winner.
“Basically, I just broke down and cried,” she said.
The couple said they were “pretty satisfied with our life” and would have to think long and hard about what do with the money after first paying off bills. But they don’t expect things to change too much.
‘I can’t go fishing all the time’
A truck driver all his adult life, the 64-year-old Don Harvey said he did not plan to stop working.
“I’ve got to have something to do,” he said. “I can’t go fishing all the time and I don’t play golf.”
He said he would buy a fancier truck than the one that finally quit running after he rolled into Muldrow from a trip delivering air conditioners to Madison, Wis. But it won’t be a new one, he said, saying there is no reason to waste money, even if you’ve got it to waste, on a vehicle that greatly depreciates in its first two years.
The couple did not tell anyone of their big score before a news conference Friday afternoon at the Oklahoma Lottery Commission in Oklahoma City.
The Multi-State Lottery Association announced previously that only one ticket sold for Wednesday night’s drawing matched the six numbers drawn: 9-11-13-24-43, and Powerball 18. The odds of winning were about 176 million to one, said Jim Scoggins, executive director of the lottery.