Big win, small changes

The reality of her good fortune set in for Marilyn Citron last week when she paid off the mortgage on the tiny home in Mystic she bought 24 years ago.

Less than two weeks after winning a Connecticut Lottery Classic Lotto jackpot of $9.7 million on Jan. 1, and deciding to take a single lump sum payout of $3.5 million on Jan. 4, the 58-year-old Citron made her final mortgage payment last week.

It was quite an emotional feeling, she said, to erase the final five years of scheduled payments in one fell swoop.

As other Americans slowly begin to regain their financial footing as the worst waves of the nation's two-year Great Recession begin to recede, Citron realizes the benefits of her windfall. The nest egg will provide financial security for Citron, her 24-year-old son, her mother, and her much-loved pet dogs and cats.

A registered nurse who now works as a business manager for the senior vice president of development operations at Pfizer Inc. in New London, Citron had already planned her retirement for this March before her big win. She hasn't changed the date, and in fact is still going to work each day. She has abandoned plans to find a part-time job to supplement her retirement savings. Instead, she'll spend more time doing what she had planned to after retirement - volunteering for causes that she supports.

When Citron went to Connecticut Lottery headquarters in Rocky Hill to collect her prize the Monday after the long New Year's holiday weekend, she didn't realize that being the sole winner of a $9.7 million lottery ticket would make her an instant celebrity. But she had a pretty good idea about the odds.

Her win was a 1-in-7.1 million chance. But after playing the same six numbers twice a week for the past 23 years, she figured she had as much of a chance at being the one as anybody else plunking down the $1 for the ticket.

"My father, he's dancing up on a cloud," she said, of her late father, who played his own lottery number combination for years, but never realized a big win like his daughter.

"I'm not a big gambler," Citron said. "But once I started playing my numbers, I just couldn't stop. What would happen if my numbers came in?"

So for 23 years she invested $2 a week to play the numbers 01-06-08-12-14-35 once each on Tuesdays and Fridays. The first five numbers are birthdays, and the last, 35, Citron's age the year she began investing in the lottery.

Which is the moral of this story: The lottery is not a get-rich-quick game. Citron played it responsibly for more than two decades and never collected more than $64 on a single ticket before her multi-million-dollar win.

In fact, by her own estimate, she invested about $2,300 on tickets over the years and won, maybe, $300 total. She's very grateful for the $3.5 million windfall but doesn't think it will drastically change her life. She'll help her family and friends, make charitable donations, and do a little traveling, but otherwise things won't change.

"I'll never be one of those people you see on the TV shows about how the lottery changed my life," she says. The money will certainly help, "but I still have the same sorrows, joys, pains as everyone else. I still have to get up in the morning and feed the dogs and scoop the poop.

"Yes, it will enhance my life, but how it will change it - I hope it doesn't change it," she says.

And that's the right attitude.

Citron hasn't done anything extravagant and doesn't plan to. She's still driving the same car, going to work every day, and yes, playing the same six numbers twice each week in the state's Classic Lotto.

While her original odds were 1-in-7.1 million, it's not unheard of for a jackpot winner to hit it big a second time. It's happened before.

So Marilyn, keep the faith and never forget the odds.

Ann Baldelli is associate editorial page editor.