JACKSON COUNTY WOMAN WINS $250,000 PRIZE
IN LOTTERY’S 'LUCKY DIAMONDS' SCRATCH GAME

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DES MOINES, Iowa – A Jackson County woman said she didn't sleep at all Thursday night as she waited to claim a $250,000 lottery prize.

"I was shaking so bad to the point of tears," Brenda Wagner of Sabula said Friday morning as she claimed her prize at the lottery's regional office in Cedar Rapids. "I never slept at all last night. I've been up all night."

Wagner said she bought a ticket in the "Lucky Diamonds" instant-scratch game Thursday evening at the Hop N Shop, 416 Broad St. in Sabula, and then played the ticket at home. She was alone at the time and began calling family members when she realized her good fortune.

"When I was scratching the amount, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh!' I couldn't believe it," said Wagner, 46, who works as a line assembler in water cooler production at Elkay Manufacturing Co. in Savanna, Ill. "I called my mom. She was like, 'What?' Then I called my husband and my sister."

Wagner was especially amused by her husband's reaction.

"He couldn't believe it," she said. "I told him on the phone on the way home and he hung up on me! And I called him back and I go, 'Did you hear what I said?' And he's like, 'Well, yeah, but I really don't believe you!'"

She said he definitely believed her when he got home and saw the ticket – and then he also started calling people to spread the good news.

Wagner said that after she played her Lucky Diamonds ticket, she took it back to the convenience store and had it checked on the lottery terminal by the same clerk who'd sold her the winning ticket.

"I went right back over there and she was going to give me money out of the till," Wagner said. "She said, 'You look awfully white, so you must have won something.' And I said, 'I don't think you can pay me this one.' And she ran it through and she was like, 'Oh my gosh!'"

Wagner said she took Friday off from work to claim her prize, but she's been assured by her friends from Elkay Manufacturing that her name is in lights there.

"They said, 'You are so famous at work! You're the talk of the work,'" she said.

Wagner said she and her husband, Al, have made some plans for the winnings.

"We're going to be debt free and we're going to take a nice vacation," she said. "And I really have no idea what else."

Lucky Diamonds is a $10 scratch game. Players try to match any of "your numbers" to the "winning numbers" in the play area on each ticket. Players who find the "double diamond" symbol win double the prize shown. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game are 1 in 3.18.

Thirteen top prizes of $250,000 are still available in the game. Sixty-two prizes of $5,000 also remain unclaimed in Lucky Diamonds along with more than 950 prizes of $500.

Wagner is not the only big lottery winner in Sabula, a community of about 650 along the Mississippi River. The Larry Hasken family of Sabula won a $31.8 million Powerball jackpot in January 2000.

Since the Iowa Lottery's start in 1985, its players have won more than $2.2 billion in prizes while the lottery has raised more than $1.1 billion for state programs.