Iowa's $1 million Powerball winner almost didn't buy his lottery tickets

Freezing temperatures almost kept George Dickerson from buying his Powerball tickets.

But luckily for the central Iowan, he bundled up and braved the cold on Dec. 30. Dickerson, 57, of Colfax won $1 million in that night's Powerball drawing, according to a Friday news release from the Iowa Lottery.

“I almost didn’t go — it was freezing out,” Dickerson said Friday, when he claimed his prize at lottery headquarters in Clive. “But I thought, ‘Well, you’d better go get them.’”

The lottery terminal was broken at the first gas station Dickerson drove to. So he traveled to the Kum & Go convenience store at 1200 N. Walnut St. in Colfax, where he purchased the winning ticket minutes before the sales cut-off.

Dickerson and his family own Dickerson Mechanical Inc., a plumbing, heating and electrical business based out of Colfax. In 2010, a flood destroyed the business, leaving the family nearly broke.

The Dickersons poured their savings into repairs. They saved the business, but faced a new problem: “We’ve been worried sick about what we’re going to do to retire sometime because it took it all," Dickerson said.

Dickerson believed their luck would change. "Ever since (the flood), I’ve told all our friends, ‘I’m going to hit the lotto. I don’t know when I’m going to do it, but you’d just better believe me, I‘m going to hit it,'" he said. "I just thought that you have to have luck in life."

So when a friend called to tell him that someone in Colfax had won $1 million, Dickerson thought it must have been him. Sure enough, printed on his ticket were the first five numbers drawn, an automatic $1 million prize: 28-36-41-51-58.

Dickerson missed out on a share of the then-$390.1 million jackpot, which climbed to a $440 million annuity ($278.3 million cash option) when no one matched all five numbers and the Powerball that night.

But Dickerson said he still feels blessed: "It looks like I'm going to have an easy retirement now."

Wednesday's drawing once again failed to produce a jackpot winner. Saturday night's drawing has an estimated $550 million in prize money.

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