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Leesburg Woman Claims $11.94 Million Lotto Jackpot

NR 08-31-01 ... On Friday, Aug 31, a woman from Leesburg claimed the $11.94 million Lotto jackpot from the Aug 4 drawing at Lottery Headquarters in Tallahassee. Carol O'Leary (37) chose to collect her award in form of 30 annual installments of approximately $398,000 each, instead of receiving a lump sum payment. Initially, the jackpot had been estimated at 11 million, but based on higher-than-anticipated sales for the Aug 4 drawing, the total prize was actually $11.94 million.

"Oh, my God, we have the winning numbers!" Carol said when she first checked her Lotto ticket. "I first thought it was a dream. I could not believe it."

Carol, a part-time insurance secretary laid-off a year and a half ago, bought her lucky ticket at the Publix Supermarket, located at 10601 on US Highway 441 in Leesburg. The store will receive a $10,000 retailer bonus from the Florida Lottery for selling the jackpot winning ticket.

"I buy lottery tickets when I'm at the store and have a little change left," Carol indicated. "This time I happen to have three dollars left." She purchased three Quick Pick tickets, but did not check her numbers until two days after the drawing when she returned from a trip.

"When we returned Monday night, we got a call from my mother asking if we had heard the winning Lotto ticket was sold at a Publix in Leesburg," said Daniel (39), Carol's husband. "My dad read the numbers to my mom, she relayed them to me and I read them off to my wife. After each number, Carol kept saying, 'Ok.'"

"I wondered what she meant by 'OK,'" Daniel stated. "Then she exclaimed, 'Oh, my God, we have it!'" But Carol mentioned that she could still not believe it.

"Don't play a joke on me," she said to her husband. "How did you know the numbers on our ticket? You probably told them what numbers to say to me."

Daniel revealed that his mom and dad were screaming over the phone in the background while he was trying to verify the numbers to her. "I went and found a newspaper in my recycling bin and checked the numbers in the paper," he said. "I believed it then that we had won!"

The O'Learys disclosed that they plan to use some of their winnings to pay off bills, buy a new car, and take a nice trip.

Carol is the 13^th Florida Lotto winner with a ticket purchased in Lake County, the third winner with a ticket from Leesburg, and the 694^th overall winner since the game began in 1988.

Total ticket sales for this jackpot generated revenues of approximately $7.37 million for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund for Florida's schools.

NR 08-31-01 ... Three Lotto jackpot winning tickets have now been purchased in Leesburg, Lake County. Previous winners include a $6.72 million jackpot from 18 Jan 97 and an $11.66 million payout from 7 Apr 90, which was part of a large $58.32 million jackpot shared by five players. Besides Leesburg, seven other locations in Lake County have sold another ten jackpot winning tickets for a total of 13 issued in the county. The cumulative payout value of those 13 tickets amounts to $105.22 million, a figure that ranks as the 17^th highest among all Florida counties. The average payout per Lake County ticket is $8.09 million, and the maximum individual award has been a $22.00 million jackpot won on 22 Nov 00 by a ticket acquired in Mount Dora. Below is an itemization of the three Lotto jackpots won with tickets from Leesburg. [Payout and jackpot amounts in $ millions].

NR 08-22-01 ... Added a new Map page which shows all Lottery winning locations in Florida that have been mapped by Flottery.com. Please note that the URL of all hyperlinked maps has changed. If you have bookmarked any of the maps, you may update your URL links by visiting the new Map page. Enjoy!