After buying a ticket in the aptly named town of Winner, South Dakota, 23-year-old rancher Neal Wanless won a $232 million Powerball prize, which he plans to use to help his impoverished community.
23-year-old rancher Neal Wanless was having money trouble. His family owns a 230-acre ranch near Mission, South Dakota, where they raise cattle and sheep, but in recent years, they haven’t quite been able to make ends meet: their trailer was repossessed last year, and they’ve been struggling to keep afloat by selling scrap metal for extra cash. “They are from real meager means, I guess you’d say,” their neighbor, Dave Assman, told The Associated Press.
But the family’s luck has turned around since Wanless made a quick stop at a convenience store in the aptly named town of Winner, where he purchased $15 worth of Powerball tickets, using his family’s birthdates to choose the numbers for his tickets.
To his amazement, the down-on-his-luck rancher won the jackpot, claiming a $232.1 million prize—one of the largest undivided wins in American history—last Friday. After paying off tax obligations, he’ll take home a lump sum of $88.5 million.
From the sounds of things, Wanless isn’t planning to blow his newfound fortune on fancy cars, exotic trips, or expensive mansions, though after finding out about the win, he told his horse that “it’d be nice if we go for a longer ride than usual on a bigger ranch of our own,” says People Magazine.
Along with upgrading his ranch, Wanless plans to use the money to help his family out of their financial hole, and to benefit his native Todd County, which is the seventh poorest region in the United States. He also plans to donate a sizable chunk of the winnings to charity.
“My family has been helped by the community and I intend to repay that help many times over,” he said.