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Lawrenceville, N.J. matriarch Pearlie Smith and her 7 children are the winners of a $429 million Powerball jackpot.
AP Screenshot
A 70-year-old New Jersey mother and her seven grown children pooled $6 dollars and bought a lottery ticket in Trenton, N.J. That ticket hit the Powerball—a 44-state lottery—for $429.6 million dollars.
Valerie, Marcia, Steven, Jacqueline, Tracy, Kathy, Renee and their mother, Pearlie, revealed themselves as the eight winners of the Powerball jackpot on Thursday, according to Lawrenceville, N.J. Patch.
Oldest sibling Valerie Arthur, a retired administrator from the N.J. Department of Corrections, spoke for the family during a Friday afternoon press conference.
Arthur said that her mother Pearlie Smith, a pastor at a Trenton church, said that the winning numbers were “divine intervention” and came to her in a dream. She noted that none of the numbers were birthdays or anniversaries, and although her mother rarely gambles, the matriarch, who bought the ticket, felt “compelled to listen to the intuition.”
The family says it will use the money to pay off student loans and their mortgages, and plan to tithe 10 percent and give some to charity.
One of their siblings, Kathy, plans to use some of her winnings to help mentor young women. She had been struggling to get financing for her program dedicated to just that.
“Now she has her own funding where she can help these young women at-risk,” Arthur said. “She can go and change lives on her own accord.”
USA Today reports that the family took a few days to announce themselves because they had their family lawyer help to secure financial advisers to help them manage the huge influx of cash.
The ticket win was the seventh largest Powerball jackpot in history. The family chose a cash-payout of $284 million, according to lottery officials.
Read more at Patch and USA Today.
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