It's December 2010, and for the past week, things have been heating up for folks playing

a regional lottery game called the Hot Lotto.

It's kind of like the Powerball, just not as big.

Each ticket has five numbers between 1 and 39, plus a sixth number between 1 and 19 that's

known as the Hot Ball.

For players, they just let the computer draw their digits at random.

Others use the play slip to pick their favorites.

The prize for getting the first five numbers right was 10 grand.

But if your ticket included that magic sixth number, that's where the real money was.

And the more people that buy a ticket, the higher the jackpot.

And this time, the jackpot had hit a massive $16.5 million.

Now, I can think of a lot of things that I could do with that kind of money.

In just a few days before New Year's, the Multistate Lottery Association announced that

someone had bought the winning ticket with all six numbers.

All the association knew was that the ticket had been purchased from a convenience store

in Des Moines, Iowa, where the Hot Lotto headquarters were based.

And I always thought, if I ever won the lottery, I don't want to accept it anonymously because

you win all that money.

All of a sudden, you start to get new cousins and new friends that you never met.

But the state of Iowa legally requires lottery ticket holders to come forward publicly

to claim their prize.

Terry Rich, the then director of the Iowa lottery, was ready for the winner to reveal themselves.

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