As 32 year old Jeff Tomlinson engaged in taking his 3-year-old toddler to the nursery to support his wife, Jolene, he was hardly thinking of making a fortune on the job. He was rather enjoying his daily chit-chats with the sweet little one in the mornings and grateful looks from his hard working wife in the evenings before he would head off for his evening classes at Kirkwood Community College where he was working towards an engineering degree. However, it was due to these daily errands that he eventually made a million. What looked like a usual Friday morning, as he took his daugher to the daycare, turned out to be the most sensational experience in his life. As he stopped on the way at Kum & Go store in North Liberty, somebody advised him to check his lottery ticket, as the news spread that someone had purchased a lottery ticket worth $1 million. Wasting no time, he dashed to the car to check his numbers. He did purchase a ticket from Wednesday's Powerball drawing a couple of days ago. Checking the winning numbers online, he was shocked to discover that he was the one, he was the winner they were talking about in the store. He then took the winning ticket back to the store to be signed and checked. "We all took pictures of my ticket with the receipt and all that. Everybody was excited. I was tearing up and shaking in the middle of the store. I just could not believe it."
Jeff Tomlinson announced his decision to claim the winning straight away as he was worried that something might happen to the ticket. The electronics technician at Rockwell Collins in Coralville, he called his boss straight after and took the day off. He then called his wife, Jolene, who was working that day and declared the big news to her. "I think she's still in shock about the whole thing," he mentioned. "She asked me repeatedly, 'Are you kidding?'" His daugher, meanwhile enjoyed her day in the nursery without getting involved in all the commotion.
A Coralville man said that he's always dreamed about winning a lottery and pondered what it would be like to be a lottery winner - and now he knows the feeling for certain. That Friday Jeff Tomlinson Jr. became $1 million richer as he claimed his Powerball prize.
"I didn't really consider it a possibility, it was more of a fantasy of what would I do if I won," Tomlinson admitted as he received his prize at lottery headquarters in Clive. "But I want to make sure that my family is well taken care of - now, in the future. Even my daughter, I want to make sure that she's good for college and the future."