ROCHELLE – A Rochelle woman was the winner of the largest VFW Post #3878 Queen of Hearts jackpot to date. On Tuesday Lauri Hays was announced as the winner, taking home $458,464.50. Lauri Hays was at home when she found out her ticket and correct guess as to where the queen was hiding was pulled.
“I was literally sitting at home crying,” she said, “and I think I might start crying again now.” “It was super exciting. It was definitely life changing.”
Hays received 65% of the over $700,000 jackpot, with the remaining 35% going to the VFW Post. Joe Drought explained that 17.5% will go to the organization for improvements and operational costs, and the other 17.5% would be donated to charity.
“This might knock a couple years off my retirement,” Hays noted, “But I just plan on saving the money, actually.”
The VFW said that the game will take a break for 4-6 weeks while they get some improvements done to the building.
“Well, the community’s involvement and their participation and their contributions really have just been a tremendous blessing to us here at The Post. And in turn, we’re going to be able to bless a lot of organizations with our donations that we’re going to give out from that share of the jackpot. It’s just been tremendous and we’re still soaking it all in and we’re just very appreciative of all of the volunteers’ time and efforts and all of the staff members here that have just been working their tails off, you know, trying to keep up with this and to put our organization in a positive light.” said Drought.
