Thousands line up at Primm store for shot at $1.6B Powerball jackpot

The winning numbers drawn Saturday night were: 28, 45, 53, 56, 69 and Powerball 20.

As of 9 p.m. it had not been determined whether any tickets had won the jackpot. The cash prize is $782.4 million.

UPDATE:

Original story:

With the Powerball jackpot sitting at a staggering $1.6 billion, thousands of people from Nevada — a state where gambling is king but you can’t buy a lottery ticket — lined up at a lottery store on the California border in hopes of winning enough money to pay off their bills and then some.

It was a madhouse at The Lotto Store at Primm, about 40 miles south of Las Vegas, where thousands of people began lining up at 5 a.m. Saturday to buy their Powerball tickets ahead of Saturday night’s drawing.

An estimated 9,000 people bought tickets at the store on Saturday, according to Barbara Martinez-Humphrey, the director of hotel operations for Primm Valley Casino Resorts, which runs the store.

All told, about 18,000 people have bought lottery tickets at the store in the past week, Martinez-Humphrey said. It’s the busiest the store has ever been in the two decades it’s been open, she said.

“To sum it all up in word, it’s been crazy,” Martinez-Humphrey said.

Nevada is one of five states in the United States that does not sell lottery tickets. The other states are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii and Utah. The Powerball jackpot has grown after almost 40 consecutive draws without a winner. The odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million, but the odds of winning any cash prize are about one in 25.

Some of the people in line on Saturday included Rick Perkins, 40, and his wife LaChae Perkins, 44, who made the trip from Las Vegas. At $2 a piece, the couple bought 17 Powerball tickets.

“I’m going to get a giraffe,” Perkins said. “I’ve always heard people say that’s when you have giraffe money, that’s when you know you have too much money.”

In addition to buying a giraffe, just because they can, the Perkins would invest in real estate and pay off bills. Then they would go on a six-month trip around the world, going to places such as Israel and Africa and elsewhere.

Las Vegas resident Elizabeth Darling, 53, was in line with her ex-husband Bill Darling, 62.

After paying off her Dodge Challenger and buying a house and car for everybody in her family, Elizabeth Darling said she would really have think about how she would spend the money. “Ponder and squander” is how she described it.

“Ideally, I would get enough property to have a homestead,” she said. “I would have cows and chickens and pigs and learn how to grow my own food, and I would just live offline.”

After waiting in line for about an hour and a half, Rhonda Perry, 64, of Las Vegas was sitting in a portable chair. How would she spend the money? “Buy me a (expletive) mansion!” she said before dashing off into the store.

Louis Werner, 42, and Randy Maiolo, 68, both of Las Vegas, didn’t know each other but ended up striking up a friendly conversation as they waited in line, echoing the exited, friendly atmosphere of the hopeful crowds. They spoke of giving money to family and friends, going on trips, giving to charity and in Werner’s case, retiring early.

“You stand in line with people here like it’s Disneyland,” Werner joked.

Asked about the reason they had just waited in line for an hour and a half with everybody else, Werner articulated why: “Because of the big money.”

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com or 561-324-6421. Follow @BrettClarkson_ on Twitter.