DailyMail– A 50-year-old supervisor at a Michigan fiberglass factory said she ‘automatically’ quit her job after winning the $310.5 million Powerball jackpot.
Julie Leach, from Three Rivers, said she was having a ‘really bad night’ at work when she went to a McDonald’s drive thru to get dinner, and decided to check her numbers.
To her shock Leach found she had scooped the jackpot, and says she plans to buy a plot of land to build houses for her and her partner of 36 years, and their three children and 11 grandchildren.
According to Fox 17, Leach said: ‘About 6.30 at night I stopped to get my coffee and got $20 worth of lottery tickets and just went to work.
‘I was having a really bad night so I went to McDonald’s for lunch and thought I might as well check my own numbers while I’m sitting her and that’s when I realized I was the winner.
‘I didn’t believe it so I had to go back to work and confirm with a couple of people.’
Leach added that she woke up partner Vaughn Avery, who works at a metal casing factory, that night to tell him about the win.
He told the Detroit Free Press: ‘I said, “You’re kidding me, get out of here.” I thought I was dreaming. She goes “no, we won it.”
I had to look at it. I looked on her phone, grabbed my phone, pulled the website up. I just couldn’t believe it.
‘I said, “I really need to go back to bed to get up for work.” She said, “You don’t ever have to go to work.”‘
Leach told ABC that Avery has tried proposing to her several times in the past, but she has always refused, pointing to her friends who have gotten divorced, saying the pressure would be too much.
She added that she might be open to an offer now, but ‘he would have to sign a pre-nup’ first.
Leach added that she is still in shock after her win, saying she didn’t go to sleep for ‘over 30 hours’ after discovering her windfall.
Leach said the decision to quit her job was ‘automatic’ after her win, and that she called her boss who was only holiday in Spain to tell him ‘I don’t need that pay rise anymore’
She added: ‘”I’m going to take care of my kids. I don’t want them to work the way I had to work and deal with the things I had to deal with in life.
‘I want to make it a good life for them and take care of them.’
She regularly buys around $20 of lottery tickets, and ups that if the jackpot is especially large, and also takes part in a work pool.
But despite spreading her odds, she says she never expected to win herself, and now also plans to go traveling.
Asked where she might go, a smiling Leach responded: ‘Wherever we want.’
Leach said she has also hired a financial adviser to help her make the most of the money, saying she has ‘no idea’ what to do with so much cash.
She chose to take a lump sum of prize of $197.4 million, or $140 million after taxes. The winning numbers were 21, 39, 40, 55 and 59, with a Powerball of 17.