Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.
In 2005, Brad Duke of Star, Idaho, hit a huge jackpot: $220 million in the Powerball lottery. It took a couple days, even a couple of weeks, for the magnitude of his win to hit. He didn't tell anyone, and went about his daily routines while he tried to figure out what he wanted to do next.
As a regular lottery player, Duke had let himself fantasize about what it might be like to win thousands of dollars someday. As a cyclist, he'd always daydreamed about owning a high-end road bike and a high-end mountain bike, which his actual windfall would certainly cover.
But Duke didn't go on a spending spree. "I stayed in my house, I drove a used car for up to three years afterwards," he tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "The more I started to fantasize about what I could do with the money, the more I felt like I should try to keep my feet on the ground and change as little as I could."
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