LANSING, March 9, 2007 – Ila Kalka almost fainted when she discovered the color purple come up on the Lottery’s prize wheel during half time of Wednesday night’s Detroit Pistons-Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game.
Kalka and her fellow finalists were randomly given colored Michigan Lottery t-shirts before the drawing and she ended up with purple.
Kalka was the lucky winner of $2 million in the Michigan Lottery’s $20 Instant games grand prize drawing Wednesday night. The Barryton resident said she said had a good feeling about winning the money in the week leading up to the big event.
Kalka was on a roll with Lottery winnings. Since Dec. 1, she cashed in a whopping $4,000 from the Lottery’s $20 Instant tickets. She has no immediate plans for her latest prize money.
“This is an amazing opportunity for the Lottery to award this prize money to Ms. Kalka and her family,” said Lottery Commissioner Gary Peters. “I congratulate her and am looking forward to making even more Lottery players multi-millionaires!”
Other finalists in the drawing, whose names were drawn Friday, February 23, were James Marjomaki Jr. of Gwinn; Oliver Kyllonen of Commerce Twp.; Lauren Steele of Novi; and Steven Brown of Rockford. They each received a $5,000 appearance fee for participating in the live drawing Wednesday evening.
The $20 Instant games are different from most other Michigan Lottery Instant games because the top prize will be awarded through a drawing. All $1,000 winning tickets for “Wild Millions”, “Mega Bucks Jackpot”, “$2,000,000 Cash Winfall”, “Millionaire’s Club”, and “$2,000,000 Explosion” that were claimed before the close of business on Wednesday, February 21 were automatically entered into the finalist drawing.
All proceeds from the Lottery are contributed to the state School Aid Fund which supports kindergarten through 12th grade public education in Michigan. In fiscal year 2006, the contribution was $688 million.
For additional information, please visit the Lottery’s Web site at https://www.michiganlottery.com/.
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