FOND DU LAC, WI (WHBL/KFIZ) - The Powerball jackpot is at its highest level in nearly a year, at a minimum of 450-million dollars for Wednesday night’s drawing.
One popular place to buy a potential winning ticket is Korneli’s Main Street Express in Fond du Lac. “Sales have been awesome,” says store manager Carissa Torgersen for Tuesday’s sales. “Tons of people already lined up, coming in and getting their tickets. We sold quite a few hundred dollars at a time, but year, a lot of people coming in already lining up.”
Korneli’s used to be Ma & Pa’s on Fond du Lac’s famed “Miracle Mile.” She says the history of big winners including a group of Sargento Foods employees who won $208 million in 2006 continues to draw lottery players from around the country to the store. “I remember last year when it was really high we had people from Tennessee, Texas; it’s so crazy. They just come to our store specifically because we have that image for so long that we’re the Miracle Mile and the lucky Powerball, lottery I should say in general, and we had them travel all over, all over the state and all over the country.”
She says just about every purchase of Powerball tickets is different. “I mean we’ll have that one person that says it only takes one to win, and then we’ll have groups that come in from businesses or companies that buy a bunch of hundreds of dollars for their company, or there’s somebody that comes in and says they’d like a couple or what do you suggest. It’s different every single time.”
Last January a Chilton couple won $1 million in the Powerball drawing at Korneli’s Prairie Express on the east side of Fond du Lac.