Hayden man becomes 13th Weekly Grand jackpot winner
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 13 years, 4 months AGO
<p>Hayden's Elbert Stebbins became the 13th jackpot winner in the Weekly Grand Idaho lottery game.</p>
Hayden's Elbert Stebbins signed papers for a new house in mid-April.
The next day, Saturday, April 13, he visited the Super 1 Foods store in Hayden and bought a $2 Weekly Grand draw ticket with the winnings from an Idaho Lottery scratch ticket.
What Stebbins didn't know at the time was that later that evening he would become Idaho's 13th jackpot winner on the Idaho-only game Weekly Grand.
"I recognized I had four of the five numbers," said Stebbins when he handed his ticket to a clerk at Super 1. "That's when they said I had to get to Boise to claim my prize, that I'd won it, the whole jackpot."
Five weeks later, on Tuesday, Stebbins arrived in Boise to claim his $77,381 jackpot prize, $1,000 a week each week for the next year after taxes are paid by the Idaho Lottery.
When asked why it took so long to get to Boise to claim his prize, Stebbins said, "Well, I do live 400 miles away. That's a long trip."
Stebbins says his first priority will be to purchase furniture for his new house that he has since moved in to.
In Weekly Grand, players that match all five numbers win the jackpot. Since Weekly Grand debuted in August 2011, there have been 13 jackpot winners, including three from North Idaho. There have been 18 second-chance winners on Weekly Grand that have claimed $100 a week for a year. Eight of those winners have been from North Idaho.
For its part in selling the winning ticket, Super 1 receives a bonus from the Idaho Lottery of $7,738.