Lake Villa man wins big lottery prize

Kenny Perry’s decision to buy a $10 scratch-off lottery card last month will make the Lake Villa man $600,000 richer, Illinois Lottery officials announced Friday.

Perry, 42, purchased the first million-dollar ticket in the Lottery’s $200 Million Cash Spectacular game. He was publicly recognized by the Lottery organization Friday in Chicago.

The Lake Villa man opted for a one-time payout of $600,000 instead of $1 million over 20 years.

“A large lump sump will be much easier ... to do the things we want to do,” Perry told the Daily Herald in an interview after the event.

That includes buying a new house for his mother, who raised five children as a single mom, Perry said.

“I want to buy my mother a house, my brother a house, and a couple cars,” Perry said. “The whole family is going to benefit.”

A volunteer at a Kenosha animal shelter, Perry bought the ticket at a Citgo station in Wauconda with his older brother, Tom. They discovered it was a winner together.

Neither believed what they saw at first.

“We had to look at it and look at it again,” Perry recalled. “We even walked away and focused our eyes on something else and (said) are you sure we saw it?”

Perry got a celebratory oversized check Friday and will get the money for real in a week or so, a Lottery spokeswoman said.

The Citgo station’s owner will get a $6,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

Perry isn’t the only lottery winner in his family. A younger sister, Cori Denman, won $500 in the same game the day after Perry bought his ticket.

“Isn’t that nice?” Perry said.