Statewide Iowa — Two of the five nationwide finalists for a one million dollar New Year’s Powerball prize drawing are from Iowa.
Iowa Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer says it’s the third year for this promotion.
One finalist is Rob Long of Waterloo who buys tickets for a pool of his co-workers, friends, and family who call the group Lotto 22.
Shari Beenken from the small Kossuth County town of Titonka is the other finalist. Beenken and Long had to keep the news from others until the official public release and she says that was tough to do during the Thanksgiving holiday with her sister.
Players had to enter non-winning tickets to get a chance at the New Year’s drawing. Long says his group didn’t know he had entered.
They each have already won ten-thousand dollars in cash and a ten-thousand-dollar home entertainment package for being finalists. Long’s group will each get around 45-thousand dollars if they win the million-dollar prize. Beenken will get the keep the entire one million dollars if she wins. She and her husband want to get a vacation home, and she’d like some new appliances.
Beenken says it was hard waiting to tell everyone about being a finalist, and now there is a whole month to wait before she knows if she won.
Long has the same feeling.
They will get to find out before midnight as the announcement on ABC’s broadcast of “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve” in Times Square, New York will come in the eastern time zone which means 11 pm Iowa time.
The members of the Lotto 22 are:
From Clarksville: Scott Herrmann and Victor Herrmann
From Denver: Bruce Gonnerman
From Dunkerton: Michael Nicolaus and Nancy Smock
From Independence: Bryan Cain and Kristen Kayser
From Jesup: Ronald Kester
From La Porte City: Bruce Long
From Oelwein: Ellyn Perkins
From Plainfield: Valeria Marks
From Raymond: Randy Ruehs
From Shell Rock: Grant Clark
From Waterloo: Trish Bandfield, Mark Burke, Steven Foster, Kelvin Holmes, Rob Long, Nesffy Molina, Mike O’Connor, Martin Van Horn, Eric Woodward.
