Not just because I respect the fact she's a nurse, I'm hopeful that she will not let it affect her. Winning the lottery is notorious as a curse.
About 70 percent of people who suddenly receive a windfall of cash will lose it within a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education.
Of course, there are many people whose lives were only improved by winning the lottery. But let's take a look at the kind of damage this has done to the lives of a few past winners:
Sandra Hayes
“These are people who you’ve loved deep down, and they’re turning into vampires trying to suck the life out of me...I had to endure the greed and the need that people have, trying to get you to release your money to them.”
Jack Whittaker
“I wish that we had torn the ticket up”
Jack Whittaker was already a millionaire when he won a $315 million in a lottery in West Virginia in 2002. The then-55-year-old West Virginia construction company president claimed he went broke about four years later and lost a daughter and a granddaughter to drug overdoses, which he blamed on the curse of the Powerball win, according to ABC News.
“He’s the last person I would have prototyped for going completely crazy but he did,” McNay told TIME on Tuesday. “No question it was because he won the lottery.”
Donna Mikkin
“If you asked me, my life was hijacked by the lottery.”
Abraham Shakespeare
“I’d have been better off broke”
Abraham Shakespeare was murdered in 2009 after he won a $30 million lotto jackpot. The 47-year-old Florida man was shot twice in the chest and then buried under a slab of concrete in a backyard, ABC News reported.