Town Waits for Winner to Come Forward

HALIFAX COUNTY, Va. — Figuring out who might have hit the state's $26.2 million lottery jackpot from this rural Southside county has become something of a whodunit.

It's the number one question at the coffee shop, the barbershop and even the county jail here.

Whoever it is -- assuming it is a local person who bought the lone winning ticket in Wednesday's drawing -- will instantly vault into the stratosphere of the rich and famous in this community of tobacco farmers and textile workers on the North Carolina border. And that person will have the distinction of nailing the largest Virginia jackpot won on a single ticket.

"I could make it on that," said mill worker Harold Adams, 59, sitting in Maxwell's Barber Shop, where you can still get a shave for $5 and a shower for $2. "There's a lotta people mad 'cause they didn't win."

Mickey Wheeler, 43, a burly county jail inmate, said as he took a smoking break from painting the county courthouse: "I'd buy me a little island somewhere. I'd make a resort and make money. Somewhere in the Caribbean."

The winning ticket was sold at Farmer's Foods supermarket in the town of Halifax, which has 800 residents and extends a mile from the railroad tracks at one end to the Jiffy Store at the other. The town is in the county of the same name, whose 30,000 residents have a median household income of $30,000. The annual prize payment alone -- $892,000 -- is one-third larger than the town's budget.

It's been fun for folks to speculate on who the winner might be: a nurse at the regional hospital; a worker at the Burlington textile mill.

The local newspaper reporter spent the last couple of days trying to track down the lucky person.

"We were sort of looking for a party, a celebration, but we didn't find it," said Doug Loftis, reporter, editor and layout person for the thrice-a-week Gazette-Virginian. "This is real big stuff. Everybody wants to know who it is."

"I hear the girl who lives right above me won it," said retired mill worker Charlie Vaughan, 68, chewing tobacco as he sat on a bag of pine bark nuggets outside Farmer's Foods.

The winning ticket, purchased for $1 between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, likely was bought by a local person, said Linda Edmonds, Farmer's assistant manager. Because of the size of the prize, the store was selling double the usual number of tickets the night of the drawing, "but most of the customers that came in here were regular local customers," she said.

The most persistent rumor is that nurse Becky Satterfield, of Halifax County, is the lucky winner. She's already been asked by "probably a hundred people" and is getting "a little bit" tired of it, she said. She denies she's the one. But she did buy a ticket Wednesday night at Farmer's, she acknowledged.

At what time? "I'm really not going to discuss it further," she said.

Although the winner can't claim the prize before tomorrow, when the Virginia Lottery office reopens after the holiday, a lot of people don't fault the mystery winner for not coming forward immediately.

"Somebody would knock you in the head in Halifax County for that ticket, you know," said Dora Amos, 58, shopping for spices at Farmer's to make watermelon rind pickles.

Or maybe the instant wealth knocked the winner out, mused Calvin Younger, 55, a bagger at Farmer's. "I might be in the hospital having a heart attack," he said. "It's enough to make you lose your mind."

"You'd have to change your telephone number and probably your address," said Younger, wheeling carts back into the store. "You'll find out that people you don't know are related to you."

Everyone will want to sell you something, said Town Manager Bob Greene: "Wanna buy a town for $26 million?"

The Lotto jackpot mystery has raised the pulse of downtown Halifax, where there's a single stoplight and the local Goodwill store is running a two-for-one back-to-school sale.

"It is the biggest story out here," said construction worker Willie Smith, 52, scratching at three $2 lottery scratch tickets as he jawed with Vaughan outside Farmer's. "They've been talking about it for years, how Halifax and South Boston never gets the big winner. It's always Virginia Beach or Norfolk or North Carolina. Never here!"

Edmonds, who played the lottery herself Wednesday, jokingly told everyone she sold a ticket to Wednesday night that they were the lucky one, "having no idea that I was actually selling the winning ticket!"

Now, people come up to her wanting to touch her hand for luck. She's still a little giddy about it all.

"That's something to think about: I had a $26 million winning ticket in my hand -- maybe only for a moment, but I did!"