Powerball mania hit Arizona from June 30 through Aug. 25, and although we didn’t sell the winning jackpot ticket, we did have eight $200,000 winners. Two of their stories are told here – both of them from the drawing of Aug. 22, 2007.

Vincente Guarino is a stock broker by trade and usually plays the Powerball as part of a pool at work. However, he also purchases Quick Pick Powerball tickets for himself and his wife separately from those at work. And is he glad he does! Vincente was watching television when the Powerball numbers rolled across the bottom of the television screen. He checked his tickets and couldn’t believe what he was looking at – five matching numbers. In fact, he was so unsure, that he didn’t even tell his wife that he thought they had a winner.

The next day, Vincente was like a Monopoly® player, only he was headed straight to the Arizona Lottery Office to redeem his ticket. He still hadn’t told his wife – he planned to tell her that night when she got home from work. He already had a few plans for his winnings – pay some bills, invest the rest, and maybe he and his wife would do something special later.

Carlos Ponce stopped at a gas station and, as he usually did, whatever cash he had left after paying for gas, was what he used to purchase his Quick Pick Powerball tickets.

A few days later, while he was at the gas station again, Carlos had the clerk scan his tickets. “The clerk thought the machine was broken.” Evidently, he’d never scanned a winning ticket where the terminal printed out a claim form. But, he gave Carlos back his ticket and the form. When he got home, Carlos went online to check the amount, and when he saw that five numbers were worth $200,000 he got excited about the win. At that point, he woke up his wife to tell her. They both still had some trouble believing it was real as they’ve only had two very small wins previously and wanted to be sure they hadn’t misread the ticket.

So far, they’ve only told family. They plan to pay off their mortgage and invest the rest. Being a self-employed retailer, Carlos doesn’t have a lot of spare time; in fact, he does a lot of his paperwork at home on the weekends. The rest of the time he spends with his family.

All of our eight $200,000 winners were all smiles when they received their checks.