Lucky locals

COEUR d'ALENE - It's either a rabbit's foot, a four leaf clover, or something's in the water.

Or it's just a complete coincidence.

Either way, a Coeur d'Alene couple's $145,000 Wild Card jackpot in the Idaho Lottery has kept Kootenai County's winning streak alive and well.

That's seven - count 'em - seven big winners in the last 15 months.

All those millions of dollars in windfall don't make Kootenai the luckiest county in the country ... Wait, actually, it might.

"I can't prove it definitively," said Dave Workman, Lottery spokesman. "But I'm pretty sure it's one of the luckiest counties in the country."

For couple Ralph and Jody Paul that's music to their ears.

Literally, with their $145,000 win they plan to pay down bills and set up a college fund for their 12-year-old daughter, Katie, whose favorite subject is music.

A clarinet player, Katie wants a guitar now, too.

"Everyone is asking if we're going to quit our jobs now," Jody said Wednesday. "We're not going to."

In fact Ralph, who works in air quality for the Department of Environmental Quality, and Jody, who works at a bank as a fraud specialist, missed only two days of work between them after they learned of their win.

It's life altering, learning such news, but not completely life-changing where the couple will drop everything and run. Still, after taxes, the $97,300 will be a relief.

"It's a big help," Jody said. "Every penny was going to bills."

The couple had a news conference Wednesday at Fairway Gas and Grocery, the Kathleen Avenue store where the winning numbers were played. Medical bills and paying down a second mortgage on the home that took a financial hit after the housing bubble burst will be the big expenditures.

Ralph has played Lotto since moving to Idaho from Florida five years ago. Living in Coeur d'Alene Place, he would swing by the neighborhood store and spend $4 a week. He was hopeful, not expecting, to hit it big one day, always playing the same numbers - the eventual winners: 3, 7, 11, 17, 27 and the Wild Card as the jack of clubs.

"I'd win a dollar here, a dollar there," he said of some of his little payouts.

Then the big one.

The winners were announced Saturday, Oct. 8. On Sunday the 9th, Ralph couldn't believe what he saw.

"He started screaming for me to get upstairs," Jody said, as Ralph checked the numbers online.

"His hand was shaking so bad he couldn't sign (the ticket). I said, 'Ralph, you don't have to sign it right now.'"

All of the previous Kootenai County winners won amounts of more than $100,000, with the biggest purse going to jackpot winner Holly Lahti, of Rathdrum, who won $190 million on Mega Millions in January.