Norfolk custodian claims $1,000-a-week lottery prize

NORFOLK

A Postal Service custodian has really cleaned up. Thanks to the Virginia Lottery, he'll be sweeping up a $1,000 check every week for the rest of his life.

In 10 years, that will be more than $500,000 before taxes.

Lottery officials gave Henry Mullins of Norfolk a souvenir check - and a smaller, but more negotiable check - on Thursday after he turned in the winning ticket from Saturday's multistate Win For Life drawing.

He is 17th top-prize winner in Virginia since the game was launched 21 months ago, said John Hagerty, a Lottery Department spokesman.

Mullins said he could barely believe he'd won when he saw that his ticket matched the winning numbers, Hagerty said.

"I looked at it a thousand times," he told Virginia Lottery officials. The winning numbers were 2-4-6-12-24-42 and the Free Ball number was 23. Mullins won by matching the first six numbers.

Postal punsters could argue that, for him, those numbers really delivered. Despite having something of a pattern, Mullins said there was nothing special about the numbers he played, but he had selected them at random.

Mullins bought the winning ticket at Tidewater Shell in the 3500 block of Tidewater Drive in Norfolk, Hagerty said.

That's where he received his first payment on Thursday, from Virginia Lottery Deputy Director Rich Williams. The store also received a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

It's not the first time a top-prize, Win For Life ticket has been sold in Norfolk.

Dorothy Elliott of Norfolk won in June after purchasing a winning ticket at a 7-Eleven convenience store in the 1300 block of N. Military Hwy.

Win For Life is played in Georgia, Kentucky and Virginia.

Steve Stone, (757) 446-2309, steve.stone@pilotonline.com