MAYFLOWER — With the drawing for a record $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot set tonight, local residents and out-of-state travelers are showing up in droves to purchase tickets from the last and only store in Arkansas to sell a winning ticket, workers there said.
The Crackerbox Food Store No. 25, part of the Valero gas station off of Interstate 40 in Mayflower, sold the winning ticket for a comparatively small $25 million jackpot in January 2010.
Harold Bailey of Conway claimed the prize later that month, and elected to take the $12 million cash option, which turned into $8,264,462.78 after taxes.
Bailey still comes in to buy "stacks" of tickets, an assistant manager of the Mayflower store said Wednesday.
Locals also remember the store's previous luck, as do players who are passing through on I-40, she added.
"We get a lot of customers coming in here and saying 'You were the last place that had [a winner], it's good luck,'" the manager told ArkansasOnline.
The store reported 166 tickets were sold in just three hours Wednesday morning.
One woman who walked out after buying a ticket, Rhonda Carter, said she was surprised to hear that the store sold a previous jackpot winner. She said she had other reasons for choosing that location.
"The last time I came in [the clerk] said 'Have a blessed day,' so I figured I'd buy one from him," Carter said, before adding "Plus my church needs a new [building]."
When a reporter for ArkansasOnline visited Bailey's home in 2010, a man who appeared to be holding a gun told the reporter to leave the property, which had several heating and air conditioning units in the yard.
That property appeared much the same Wednesday, with two "private property, no trespassing," signs hung at the entrance to a long dirt driveway.
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
