Big bucks

COEUR d'ALENE - Tami Garness can envision it all now.

She and her grandson whisking off in a plane, headed to who knows where. Maybe Rome. Paris.

Anywhere but here.

"Just traveling. All over the world," Garness said with a smile as she filled out a Powerball ticket on Friday at the Jifi Stop 95 in Coeur d'Alene. "Three-hundred and ten million is a lot of money."

It could also provide the basics for the Plummer baker and the 13-year-old grandson who lives with her, she conceded.

"We'd always give back too, to people like me," Garness said. "Poor."

Believers of Karma, fate, prayer - now is the time to put your spiritual investments to the test.

The Powerball jackpot for tonight is an estimated $325 million, a new record for Powerball's one-time cash option. If an Idaho Lottery player has a winning ticket this weekend, it will be the ninth largest jackpot ever won in the world.

Idaho Lottery has announced the deadline to buy a $2 Powerball ticket for the record win is 6:55 tonight. The winning numbers will be announced at 7:59.

So yeah, there's been some pick-up in customer traffic at local gas stations and grocery stores.

"Oh yeah," said Jifi Stop Manager Karyn Marvin of whether customers increase preceding huge jackpots. "It's at least double."

There's no special strategy for accommodating the demand, she said, besides taking it as it comes.

"We've all been doing this a long time," Marvin said with a chuckle. "We're prepared."

Fairway Grocery and Gas in Coeur d'Alene saw a substantial jump in sales on Wednesday, said manager Hannah Symons.

No wonder, as the gas station has sold some winning lotto tickets in the past, including a $145,000 Wild Card jackpot last October.

"It seems to be that the bigger winner that we get, there are a whole bunch of little ones," Symons said, reminding that folks need to buy a ticket to win, but they should be careful to buy what they can afford. "I think it just goes in streaks, how lucky we are. Sometimes we're really lucky, sometimes we're just lucky."

Jim Smith of Twin Lakes was hoping for the first of those after buying two tickets at Fairway on Friday.

"Pay bills and retire. And help my family," the Time Warner Cable employee said of his plans if he brings in the jackpot.

He buys a ticket every week, though it has never brought him more than a couple dollars in return.

"I feel about as lucky as I do every week," Smith figured. "I just hope it's me."

Jerry Guzman of Coeur d'Alene said his wife had urged him to buy a ticket, and they plan to each pick out their own special numbers.

"Birthdays, whatever comes to us," Guzman said after procuring the ticket at Fairway.

He often forgets to check the numbers when he buys a Powerball, he admitted.

But that probably won't be an issue this time.

"It's hard to think about - so much," the father of three said of the amount. "That would be nice. Send the kids to college, pay off the house."

Jifi Stop employee Denise Minter said she has been buying Powerball tickets for three years, all from her store, and this week was no different.

"We're going to have a winner, I can feel it," she said.

She would use the winnings to help her daughter who has cerebral palsy and is wheelchair bound, she added. And maybe to let her daughter meet her wrestling hero, John Cena.

"I would do everything I could to help my daughter get out of a wheelchair," Minter said.

Maybe few people rake in big wins from Powerball tickets, said Jim Wanless as he checked his ticket number on Friday at Fairway.

But every ticket does buy them hope, he said.

"It gives them the idea that there's something better down the road," Wanless said, adding that he would donate the cash to charity. "It helps them feel better about themselves."