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Jewish World Review
Dec. 2, 2005
/ 1 Kislev, 5766
Curse of Lady Luck
By
Dan Abrams
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Winning the lottery it seems like a dream come true. A dollar and a dream right? We all have fantasies about how winning could mean a life of carefree luxury. But as they say, be careful what you wish for.
The stories of some lottery winners suggest that it can leave you a lot worse off than when you started. First there is the obvious: Friends and acquaintances asking, sometimes begging for money. Lives change too quickly. Many winners suddenly get sued and in some cases worse than that.
Last week, 51-year-old Virginia Metcalf Merida was found dead in her Kentucky home. Merida won over $65 million in the Powerball lottery in 2000. She and her husband Mack Wayne Metcalf split their Powerball winnings and then separated. He died three years later at just 45 due to complications from alcoholism after serving four days in jail for drunk driving.
And now authorities are trying to figure out how Virginia Merida died. There was no sign of a struggle and they think she may have been dead for days before she was found. The Metcalfs are not isolated examples.
58-year-old Jack Whitaker, who won nearly $315 million in 2002 has become the poster child for how not to handle a stroke of what should be good luck. He has had hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stolen from his vehicles, house and office, including over $500,000 after he passed out in a strip bar. He pleaded no contest to assaulting a bar manager, and had to surrender his driver's license and undergo substance-abuse counseling after being arrested for drunk driving for a second time. The most disturbing last year his 17-year-old granddaughter was found dead of a drug overdose underneath an abandoned van.
Another Texas lottery winner, Billie Bob Harrell, Jr. committed suicide less than two years after winning 31 million dollars in 1997. One of the reasons? Everyone family, friends and strangers had been hitting him up for money.
Minnesota lottery winner Victoria A. Zell crashed her SUV into a truck while driving drunk, killing one passenger and paralyzing another. She was then arrested a few months later for possessing 0.7 grams of methamphetamine.
A study three years ago found that one third of lottery winners eventually went bankrupt. One third! I know we all like to believe we would not be one of "them" that we would handle it better. I buy a ticket on occasion and like to think that if I won, I'd quit my job and live happily somewhere else. I did win bingo once when I was a kid and now that I think about it, I don't know what happened to that money.
But coming back to the point, when you don't win, don't despair. You might be better for it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Dan Abrams anchors The Abrams Report, Monday through Friday from 6-7 p.m. ET on MSNBC TV. He also covers legal stories for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today and Dateline NBC. To visit his website, click here. Comment by clicking here.
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© 2005, MSNBC
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