DYSART – William “Bil” Zak made what he thought would be a simple stop for coffee and a quick check of his lottery tickets at a gas station in Vinton on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, while on his way to a pheasant hunt.
He ended up leaving the store $1,000,004 richer.
“I actually used one of the auto-check machines. The first time I checked was on Saturday and a message appeared stating the drawing didn’t happen yet,” Zak, a resident of Dysart, said in a recent email exchange with the newspaper after news broke he had purchased a Powerball ticket worth $1 million at Kwik Star in Vinton ahead of the Saturday, Dec. 20, drawing. “I didn’t think anything of it and put it back in my wallet. The following morning, I was leaving to go pheasant hunting and stopped for a cup of coffee. I purchased the coffee and decided to self-check again. I saw the words ‘Congratulations’ [on the screen followed by] the number one and then a zero and a number more [zeros]! It took a couple looks because the extra $4 at the end threw me off…