Lottery winner plans to help underprivileged children

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

It’s a good thing Debbie Rogers of Marion did not call directory assistance last week.
When she went into Barker’s Quik Stop to use the phone book, she cashed a winning $5 Virginia Lottery ticket and bought another, this time winning $200,000.
She and husband, Joe Rogers, went to the Virginia Lottery’s Southwest Virginia Customer Service Center in Abingdon to claim the prize where she told officials, “I’m in shock right now,” a lottery release said.
The day before Christmas, Debbie said winning still had not hit home because “everything has been so busy.”
That assessment also described the local grapevine, where word of Debbie’s winning circulated immediately through the county courthouse where Joe works in the circuit court clerk’s office.
Word got across the country quickly too. Debbie said a granddaughter in college in Mississippi knew about the big win even before Debbie got home with it.
The win was money in the bank for Debbie who planned no splurges with it, no life-changing decisions – at least not for her and Joe.
Debbie works in dentistry for underprivileged children in the public schools and the community, and plans to support the work of Smile Train. The charitable organization provides surgeries to correct cleft palate in Third World children.
“There’s nothing about our lives we would change,” Debbie said. Instead, she said, they’ll look for ways “we can do something for others.”
According to the Virginia Lottery, Debbie’s ticket was the first Cash Blast ticket to win the $200,000 prize in this game, meaning as of Tuesday two more top-prize winners remained to be claimed.
The lottery said nearly 95 cents of each dollar spent on the Virginia Lottery by players goes back to the commonwealth in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retailer commissions. Since 1999, all Virginia Lottery profits have been designated solely to K-12 public school education in the commonwealth. In that time, the lottery has turned over nearly $3.9 billion for Virginia’s public schools. The latest annual profits of $455 million currently represent about 6 percent of state funding for public education in Virginia. In 20 years, the lottery has sold more than $20 billion in tickets, awarded more than $1 billion in retailer commissions and paid more than $10.9 billion in prizes to players.