A dream come true can turn into a nightmare.
I was working at KYYX in Seattle during the early 1980s, when Washington's first ever million-dollar lottery winner was announced. I was happy to see that it was a woman who lived in my hometown of Walla Walla. At the time one million dollars was, and really, still is, a ridiculously high amount of money.
Being the first, afforded her celebrity that went beyond her hometown. Years later, I had moved back to Walla Walla from 1985-1989. There was an article on her. She was a nurse and was alleged to have taken medicines from work. This was a headline in the local Union-Bulletin and it too, had reverberations across the state and beyond.
Walla Walla is a very small town and really there is "nowhere to hide". Having that type of celebrity and money that quickly in a town where folks are generally modest and unassuming can cause any number of problems. Whether the weight of becoming a first winner, caused the problem or simply drew attention to an existing problem remains to be seen.
Last week, on the eve before Thanksgiving, I was asked to pick up scratch off lottery tickets for everyone attending the feast at my wife's sister's and brother-in-law's house. I was reminded of that lady and googled to maybe see what she is doing now.
I was saddened to see that she had passed away in 2017. In the obit, there was no mention of her winning or the trouble that she found. Because of that, I decided that if I did this post, I would not use her name.
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