Palo man wins $1 million lottery prize

DES MOINES – The number of millionaires residing in the Palo area code increased by at least one on Thursday.

That's because Ken Booth, 54, of Palo, cashed in his winning $1 million Mega Millions lottery ticket at Iowa Lottery headquarters. His million-dollar payday quickly was whittled to $700,000 when the federal and state withholding taxes were removed but Booth still was satisfied with his new-found fortune that will help ease him into retirement when he quits working as a mechanical contractor next year.

“I think I can make due with what I got,” Booth joked during a news conference where he collected his oversized check from lottery officials after matching the first five numbers in Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing. He missed the grand prize because he did not match the “Mega Ball” drawn, but he did purchase a “Megaplier” option which quadrupled his $250,000 prize for the five-number match making him Iowa's sixth winner of at least $1 million this year and the third recent $1 million lottery winner in Linn County.

Booth bought his winning ticket at Casey's, 3625 Edgewood Rd. SW, in Cedar Rapids while stopping for a snack on Tuesday - the only ticket nationwide to win a $1 million prize that night - but he didn't discover his good fortune until he checked the winning numbers in a newspaper during a business-related trip to Des Moines on Wednesday. “I was pretty excited,” when all five randomly selected numbers matched his ticket, Booth said, but he went to a nearby convenience store to verify the numbers to make certain he had won.

Booth's wife, Julie, is currently in England on a business trip related to her work at Rockwell-Collins. He said it took several explanations during a call to her on an international-access mobile phone before he convinced her that he was a big lottery winner - news that he said caused her to spend a sleepless night.

Booth admitted that the development interrupted his sleep pattern as well, especially when the lottery's Cedar Rapids office told him he had to travel to the Des Moines headquarters to claim his prize.

“I had to spend the night with the ticket,” Booth told reporters. He put the winning ticket under his wife's pillow for safe keeping Wednesday night, noting that “I woke up several times in the middle of the night to make sure it was there. It was kind of a sleepless night but I made it through.”

Besides his wife, Booth told his boss, his accountant and friend Ron Mayland of Cedar Rapids that he was the Iowa Lottery's newest winner.

“I was just floored,” Mayland said when Booth told him that he had experienced something that had changed his life. He said he agreed to drive Booth to Des Moines so he could collect his winnings and hadn't told his wife what was up, although he was certain news would travel fast in Linn County once lottery officials announced that Booth's ticket was validated as a $1 million winner.

“Iowa is definitely seeing a run of lottery millionaires these days,” Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich said Thursday.

Booth said he already had planned to retire early before his big win, so his lottery prize will make retirement that much more secure.

“I'll invest it and let that go as it will,” he said. “I'm retiring next year anyway, so this will hopefully help on that end.”

The winning numbers in Tuesday's $24 million Mega Millions jackpot drawing were: 3-9-11-44-49 and Mega Ball 9. The Megaplier number was 4.

No one won the jackpot in Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing, so it climbs to an estimated $33 million for Friday's drawing.