Sometimes, for special events, Lisa Quam buys lottery tickets, which she gives out as gifts to family and friends.
But on Thanksgiving Day, the Auburn native bought the first two Powerball tickets she ever had, at Haggen Foods in Lakeland Hills. At home, she stuck the tickets on the refrigerator door.
That Sunday evening she got around to checking the numbers: 13-24-30-42-48 and Powerball 27.
Everett Quam, who had just come in from the outdoors, had already pulled his shoes off and was relaxing when he heard his wife yell from upstairs to him, and to everybody else in the house: “Come up here, come up here, right now!”
“I thought I was in trouble again,” Everett Quam recalled to laughter Thursday morning at the state Lottery headquarters in Olympia, where Lottery officials had just announced the couple as winners of the $90 million Powerball jackpot.
“We must have checked the ticket 25 times,” they said.
Theirs was the first winning Powerball ticket ever sold in Washington state.
“I am not a lucky person,” Lisa Quam said. “My husband says it’s just dumb luck.”
Now the couple have 60 days to decide whether to take their winnings in one lump sum of $56 million, or as a 25-year annuity.
Most people would probably agree, as hard choices go, that’s got to be one of the best.
The Quams have lived in Auburn all of their lives.
“Such down-to-earth, hard-working people,” said Jana Jones, public records officer and director of legal services for the Washington State Lottery.
Perhaps a bit-less-hard-working from now on. Everett Quam plans to retire from his aircraft engineering job at The Boeing Co. after 16 years on Friday, Lisa Quam from her labor relations job with Boeing on Dec. 16. She managed contracts for 25 years.
The couple said they’ll use their money to take care of the family, and that Lisa Quam has already made her first purchase — a Subaru Forester.
“She said beyond that, they just don’t know at this point what they’re doing to do,” Jones said. “They’re just trying to let it soak in. They said they are going to pay off their house and help their two children with their homes, if that’s what they want. And perhaps do a bit of traveling because they like to travel.”
They couple, married for 32 years, have two grown children, a married daughter and a son, who is engaged. Lisa Quam brought her father and six members of the family to the news conference.
If the couple were to choose the cash payout, the value before taxes would be $56 million, and after taxes — the federal tax code requires the state to withhold all federal taxes before the check is issued — $42 million. If they were to choose the 25-year annuity, however, they would receive $1 million in the first year, $1.5 million in the second, and with a 4-percent increase each year until the 25th year, their final payout would be $5 million.
