THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050598
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
They say happiness is where you find it, and Mary and Phillip Stokes seem to keep finding it in grocery stores.
They met in a grocery store, 41 years of marriage ago. Stokes made his living in the grocery business.
And last Friday, they struck it rich in a grocery store.
Of course the Norfolk couple didn't realize it until Saturday night, when their six winning Lotto numbers scrolled across the bottom of the television screen. The ticket Mary Stokes bought at the Farm Fresh on East Little Creek Road won them $13.3 million, half the Virginia Lottery's fourth largest jackpot.
Less than 24 hours later, Stokes had quit the grocery business for good.
``I called up and said `that's it,' '' said Stokes, 61, formerly employed with Acosta Sales in Norfolk. He met his wife in the Ocean View A&P in 1952, while he was a stock clerk there, and worked in the food business for 44 years. ``Didn't take any thought at all to quit,'' he said.
That's because the two had been thinking about it for years. Or ``daydreaming,'' as Stokes put it. The couple, who live near Northside Middle School, have played $20 worth of Lotto tickets a week since the games started, never winning more than about 50 bucks at a time.
``We never really expected to win it all, just to win something, maybe,'' Mary Stokes said Thursday, during a news conference called after the two cashed their winning ticket. Also 61, she'll give up her baby-sitting work once school lets out. ``Of course we wanted to win, that's why we bought the tickets.''
In store for them now: A first-class trip to Hawaii. And a new vehicle. ``I've got to get a car or truck or something, because I had to turn in the one I was using for the company,'' Stokes said.
The couple will split their winnings - 20 annual payments of $452,153 after taxes - with their son, Lewis, and with daughter Anita Peterson and her husband.
The other half of last weekend's prize also was claimed Thursday, by a Richmonder identified only as T. Spence. He bought the ticket at a 7-Eleven on Godwin Boulevard in Suffolk, and would not allow lottery officials to release information about him.
The winning numbers were 11, 16, 24, 26, 37 and 39. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
They'll be buying off the gourmet aisle now. Joining the lottery
winners Mary and Phillip Stokes, right, in Richmond Thursday are Jim
and Anita Peterson (their daughter), left, and Lewis Stokes, their
son. All will share in the annual $452,153 winnings.
KEYWORDS: LOTTERIES VIRGINIA WINNERS by CNB