I am doing a paper on Lottery winners that have accomplished wonderful
things with their money.  I need every lottery winner in the US that
won over 10 million dollars in the past 10 years and the state they
won from.  In addition, to narrow down the search, I need a link to a
book, article or website, about a great story of these winners.  By
great story I am referring to selfless acts with their winnings;
giving to the poor or homeless, giving to charity or the community, or
something that greatly helped others, and how this impacted peoples
lives as well as their own. Thank you very much for your time and effort.

---

Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 27 Jun 2006 14:03 PDT

Hello gcoleman-ga,

I?ve spent a couple of hours doing preliminary research on your
question and I?ve come to the conclusion that it?s unanswerable as
posted.

?I need every lottery winner in the US that won over 10 million
dollars in the past 10 years and the state they won from.?

You might expect that someone would have collected this information
already but no one has. I bet the IRS could compile such a list but it
would not be publishable because of privacy protection issues.

http://www.irs.gov/
http://rose.casinocitytimes.com/articles/977.html


You might also expect that each state with a lottery would have a list
of big winners that would be accessible to the public. To test this
hypothesis I reviewed what would be readily available in California. I
discovered that the California Lottery website has lots of information
about winners but the information is not organized to readily provide
you a list of major winners.

http://www.calottery.com/default.htm
http://www.calottery.com/sitemap


Most of the information about big winners is contained in the press
releases issued about jackpots and winners. You would have to click on
each press release whose headline looks promising to find the
information you?re looking for.

http://www.calottery.com/Media/CurrentQuarter/
http://www.calottery.com/Media/CurrentQuarter/20061stQtr/


There?s a also a page of Amazing Stories of winners but it?s not
comprehensive and you have to look up each winner?s name to see if
they won more than $10 million or not and whether they fall in the ten
year time frame you specified. There are 23 winners listed and
clicking through to each I found that seven of them won $10+ millions,
most of them in 2003 or 2005. Some won less than $100,000 and their
stories seem to be used to highlight different classes of winners.

http://www.calottery.com/WinnersGallery/
http://www.calottery.com/WinnersGallery/AmazingStories/kimszabo.htm


Continuing the exploration of the California Lottery website you can
come up with additional information about big winners and cumulative
statistics.

http://www.calottery.com/WinnersGallery/AmazingStats/
Here are some of the amazing prizes that have been won in California.
 -- The Largest Lotto Jackpot in California.
 -- Top Four Lotto Jackpots Won by Individuals.
 -- The Largest Fantasy 5 Jackpot.
 -- The Largest Group to Ever Claim a Lotto Jackpot.

http://www.calottery.com/NR/rdonlyres/9EACD674-8C19-45ED-B68F-5FF9714CA119/0/LotteryAR2005English.pdf
Highland Couple Wins $44 million
Tireless Child Advocates Win $27 million
California?s First Mega-Millions Jackpot Winners ($315 Million)


Even if I reviewed every page of this official lottery website I still
would not feel confident that I had located every $10+ million winner.
Then I would have to repeat this search with every other state that
has a lottery. (42 states and District of Columbia) I?ve also
discovered that there are a number of multi-state lotteries.

http://www.naspl.org/uscanada.html
U.S. Lotteries


?In addition, to narrow down the search, I need a link to a book,
article or website, about a great story of these winners. By great
story I am referring to selfless acts with their winnings; giving to
the poor or homeless, giving to charity or the community, or something
that greatly helped others, and how this impacted peoples lives as
well as their own.?

Having developed a list of winners, we are presented with your next
question. It will take extensive searching to find specific ?feel
good? stories to meet your criteria. My preliminary research shows
that there are generic lottery winner stories published by various
papers and magazines on a regular basis. Many of them show that
winners turn out to be losers at life. Some give follow-up stories
showing how winners spent their money. It?s possible to find the
occasional individual story that seems to fit your criteria.

http://www.lottoreport.com/sadbuttrue.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/02/DDGRL8GVGE29.DTL

http://fdncenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml;jsessionid=GY4IVA51LHUJRTQRSI4CGXD5AAAACI2F?id=68300049


So, gcoleman-ga, as you can see, there is lots of information
available about lottery winners but it?s simply not organized in the
way you expect. It will take a lot of digging to identify the
population you seek. How would you like to proceed?

I look forward to your clarification.

~ czh ~

I can't provide a list of all winners, but here's a heartwarming story
about some lottery winners with a worthy cause:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/08/national/main659728.shtml

I'd be glad to gather other stories of this type, if you'd like. But
the all-encompassing list is something that I doubt can be found
online. This kind of list is offered for a fee, however:

http://www.datacardcentral.com/pdf/872.pdf

Here's another heartwarming story:

A woman came home, screeching her car into the driveway, and ran into
the house. She slammed the door and shouted at the top of her lungs,
"Honey, pack your bags. I won the damn lottery!"

The husband said, "Oh my God! What should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?" 

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Just get the hell out."

Probono is an author of consumate skill and wit.  ;)

It may be of interest to you to know that the internet site
www.euromillions.be gives one, very easily, a huge spreadsheet which
means that one can produce a list, ordered by, say, size of win, for
all the Euromillions draws since that lottery started in 2004.
For the UK National Lottery there is no secret about all the results,
week by week since 1994: this infomration is readily available,
meaning that one could easily enough produce one's own spreadsheet to
give one a ordered list for this lottery as well.
What we need, as a first step, is similar spreadsheets for the forty
or fifty U.S. lotteries.

One heart warming story about what a particular lottery winner is
alleged to have done, following their big win, relates to a UK winner
of about US$26 million who flew, at her expense, a plane load of UK
scouts to British Columbia for two weeks.
Same being MUCH appreciated by the youngsters involved.
I can provide some details of this. if of interest to you