Cha-Ching, Cha-Changes
This Denverite did take home a lottery jackpot, he has added to an impressive car collection…and learned to just say ‘no’
By Jeff Rundles
When it comes to discussing “rich,” or “what is rich?” or even “I wish I were rich,” inevitably the conversation will come around to “What would you do if you won the lottery?" Everyone has thought and fantasized about winning the lottery and becoming instantly “rich,” and while the odds are long, it does indeed happen to everyday people.
Take the case of Denverite John Smith – not his real name in that he already gets enough unsolicited pleas and deal offers even nine years after the lucky winning day. In early 2000, Smith was a 57-year old divorced, Iowa transplant who made his living cleaning private homes. He reports having had some 18 clients, doing about 2, 4-hour jobs a day (one day a week he had 3 jobs) for $50-$60 each. So let’s say the average was $55 each and that he was bringing in $605 a week, for a grand annual total of just over $31,000, assuming he took no vacation. Certainly not executive pay, but livable, and of course no one would have ever accused him of being rich.
In early February of that year, Smith in fact did take a short vacation, back to Iowa to visit his grown children, and he had in his possession a Colorado lottery ticket he bought a few days earlier; the lottery ticket was “tucked into the visor of my truck,” he says. He also had a copy of a Denver daily newspaper with him, and says he happened to notice just two stories: one saying that someone had won the $3 million lottery jackpot, and another about the confiscation by authorities of $3 million in drug money somewhere on the Western Slope, complete with a photo of the $3 million stacked up on a table.
Maybe it was providence, serendipity, coincidence or just dumb luck, but the photo of $3 million stacked up juxtaposed with that same figure in an as-yet unclaimed lottery jackpot, along with the ticket there on the visor, just made him check the numbers. And check them again. And again when he got back to Denver after keeping the news to himself.
He had the winning ticket.
“I went back to Iowa two weeks later to tell the family, and a lot of them thought I was sick,” says Smith. “My sister said, ‘Why are you coming back? Are you all right?’ I just wanted to tell people I was holding a ticket for $3 million.
“My mother said, ‘You’re going to have to learn to how to say ‘no’ – put that word in your vocabulary.’ She’s a very smart person; 92 years old now.”
Smith inherited the smarts, and took his time cashing in, researching the best way to move forward. By the time he went down to the Colorado Lottery office to claim his prize, in mid-February, he decided to opt for the annuity option and take the prize over 25 annual payments. They began that first year with a check of $51,000, net of taxes, and rise about 3% per year; the 2009 check was some $71,000, net.
As he explained, you don’t, of course, get the whole $3 million.
"By taking the annuity, I get to spend $2 million over the 25 years,” he notes. “If I had taken the cash option, it was only $850,000.”
Smith says that immediately, that first year, with the deduction of taxes “they’re taking away more than I was living on,” so it is obvious that “rich” is in the eye of the beholder. Smith adds that he divides his annual check into 12 equal parts, and builds his lifestyle around that monthly income.
And it sounds like quite a lifestyle.
Smith says that upon winning the money, he immediately eliminated over half of his house-cleaning clients.
“I had some I wasn’t really happy with,” he says. “One was a remodel with a lot of dust, and she argued with me over vacuuming a sofa. She was the first client I quit.”
He adds that another client he quit insisted he come back just one more time. “When I got there they gave me a check and threw me a party. It was really nice. Usually when you tell someone you’re going to quit, they’re not happy.”
Not that he’s complaining about the money, mind you, but Smith did note that the jackpot winner just before him won a $21 million prize, “so $3 million is small change.”
Regardless, Smith, who turned 65 last November, dropped his last two clients two years ago and has been completely retired. Well, retired is a misnomer; he has no other paying job anymore, but he is busy, busy, busy.
What consumes his time these days is a hobby he began many years ago: collecting vintage cars. Only now he adds in membership in several car clubs and travelling all over to car-club gatherings and shows.
Before the lottery win, Smith had just two vintage automobiles, a ’59 Buick Electra and a ’57 Buick Special, both nice classics, and he brought them with him from Iowa when he relocated to Colorado in 1986. Winning the lottery and the extra cash has allowed him to expand his automobile horizons, and he has acquired some very choice rides, indeed.
Like last November, as a sort of birthday present to himself, he picked up a ’59 VW Beetle, with a 36-horsepower flat 4 engine. He also reports having picked up over the years a ’83 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, with 60,000 original miles, a ’65 Cadillac El Dorado Convertible, and a ’49 Buick Super.
“I went to a Buick Breakfast meeting in Loveland, and found a ’49 Buick at a garage sale,” Smith says. “It had 41,000 original miles, unrestored, and it looks wonderful. I’m the third owner – the first owner was a Buick salesman.”
But that’s not all. Smith reports having three other models in his collection now, and it’s easy to tell from the conversation that these are his crown jewels: two examples of the famous Ford Model “A,” a ’30 (solid black with whitewall tires), and a ’29 Tudor, done in blue and black, AND a ’57 Buick Century Caballero Station Wagon, a real rare and beautiful car, and one that TV personality Jay Leno has in his garage. On his Jay’s Garage web page, Leno notes that the ’57 Caballero is a pillarless hardtop, features full power and A/C, and carries a 364 cubic-inch V8 with 300 hp.
“I’ve got garages rented all over town,” says Smith. “I pay as much in garage rent than I pay for the mortgage on my condo.”
Sure it’s great to win the lottery and all, and it has obviously helped Smith pursue his hobby to a degree that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, but being a lottery winner has its downsides.
“I’ve lost some friends,” says Smith of his good fortune. “One gal I told said, ‘Why couldn’t that happen to me?’ I would have been tickled to death for a friend, but she was the opposite. I haven’t talked to her in years. Another person, a friend, he doesn’t come around anymore. Jealous, I suppose. I’ve been to a few class reunions, but I don’t tell anyone. If they don’t know, I don’t tell them.”
The Colorado Lottery, he adds, tries to help winners with some of the issues involved. They give winners a pamphlet that addresses common concerns, and they offer assistance with things like changing phone numbers, which he did to somewhat mixed results.
“I still don’t answer the phone in the house,” he says. “If they won’t talk with the answering machine, I won’t talk with them. I still get one or two calls a week from companies wanting to buy my annuity for cash -- I’m not stupid enough to answer the phone.”
