A little follow-up worth reading to the end
Don’t bother Idaho Lottery Raffle winner for cash | Local News | Idaho Statesman
Hilda Floyd always wanted a red pickup truck.
And that’s what the Idaho Lottery’s latest big winner bought herself Tuesday — but not before she’d stopped off to give tithings at her church.
“I took a cashier’s check to my church this morning,” said the 63-year-old Ada County mother of two children and grandmother of four. “I gave 10 percent. That’s what the Bible says.”
She also gave generously to family members, including her brothers, sister, niece and nephew.
Floyd held the winning ticket for the Idaho Lottery Raffle, drawn on Dec. 29.
She won $1 million, but her take-home after taxes (25 percent federal; 7.8 percent state) was about $672,000, according to a Lottery spokesman.
She wasn’t sure it was really hers, at first.
A couple of days earlier, a friend had pulled a prank on Floyd, giving her a phony winning scratch-off ticket. She thought she had won $25,000 and was taking the prankster out to dinner when she realized she had been duped.
“It really was funny,” said Floyd, who admitted to being just a little miffed at the time. They didn’t go out to dinner.
Unwilling to be fooled again, she initally dismissed another friend who called to check her Raffle ticket numbers. After reading the numbers three times on the phone, her friend said she had won.
“I said, ‘My little heart can’t take this kind of stuff.’ She said, ‘No, you really won. C’mon, you really won.’ ”
Her friend was soon at her doorstep, and the pair double-checked the numbers online. Floyd put the ticket in a safe and slept only two hours that night; she met with her accountant the next day.
Floyd said she began playing Lottery games about four years ago. She buys tickets “here and there,” maybe two a month; she bought the raffle ticket on Dec. 21, after a friend mentioned she could get a free MegaMillions ticket with each raffle ticket.
Floyd has had an eclectic career in both the public and private sectors, including running a residential care home for Alzheimer’s patients and operating a bed-and-breakfast. She once served as the mayor of Stanley, the small town in the Sawtooths.
The friend who urged her to buy — and check — the Idaho raffle ticket in late December is someone she met while working as a cook for inmates at the Ada County Jail, she said.
Did the friend ask for a cut?
“I have offered to buy her stuff, and she’s said ‘No, that’s your money,’ ” Floyd said.
But don’t try to track her down to ask for a loan. She says the money is virtually all gone. “I paid off my house, my car ... I took care of my family. I helped them out,” she said.
She didn’t set any money aside.
“Why? I may die tomorrow,” she said. “I want to bless people. If you’re not put on this Earth to bless people, then give it up.”
Katy Moeller: 377-6413
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