Cool Million Comes To One Lucky Woman

What would it be like to win a million dollars?

This is how it has been for Maxine Salinas in the four days since she did just that.

Last Wednesday, Maxine was sitting at home with her aging mother when her husband, Albert, suggested she go buy some lottery tickets.

“I asked him where he wanted to go and said I should choose, so we drove to Springdale,” Maxine recalled.

In Springdale, a small town just north of the Spokane Indian Reservation where Maxine’s mother lives, only one store sells lottery tickets: Springdale Hardware and Grocery.

Maxine went in, picked up some beef jerky, cashews and pop, then dug around in her purse for the money to buy some tickets for Lotto.

The cashier, who wears stickers that promote lottery games, had to persuade her to buy Quinto tickets. The Lotto was worth something like $17 million. Quinto was less than $2 million.

Maxine took the cashier’s advice. She bought $10 worth of Lotto tickets,$10 worth of Quinto.

“I have bought a few tickets ever since the lottery began,” Maxine said.”It’s everybody’s dream to be a millionaire.

Maxine wouldn’t describe herself as poor. “We have always had to watch our money,” she said.,”But my husband worked a lot of years to keep us in everything we needed.”

Maxine is a Spokane Indian who grew up in Spokane and attended Lewis and Clark High School.

She and her family moved around a bit, first to Yakima, later to Marysville in Western Washington, and finally back to the reservation town of Ford where Maxine cares for her mother whose heart gave out in 1995.

Her husband, Albert, didn’t come back to Ford.

After 20 years of work for a paper company in Marysville his diabetes knocked him back. Two years ago Albert lost a foot and a leg as a result of the disease. Last year, four fingers were amputated.

One of Maxine’s grandchildren moved to Marysville to help Albert get ready to sell the family farm and learn about his wheelchair.

Maxine didn’t complain.

“If it weren’t for Albert I couldn’t be here with my mother,” she said. “He’s given a lot to allow me to be here.

The way Maxine sees it, it was Albert’s urging during his most recent visit that led her to the winning ticket.

Albert wouldn’t believe it when Maxine copied down the numbers off the 11 o’clock news, went to her bedroom dresser to check her Quinto ticket, and came back shouting about being a millionaire.

Albert said she should calm down.

Then he called the all-night lottery number for himself and discovered he was, in fact, now married to a millionaire.

That Wednesday night Maxine couldn’t sleep. “Albert told me I had better sleep or I was going to have a heart attack,” she said.

All night Maxine lay awake in bed slapping herself.”I’m going to wake up a poor person,” she remembered.

She didn’t.

Instead, she drove to Spokane last Thursday and picked up a check for $1,008,000.

On Friday, the check still was not cashed. “I’ve got a pretty level head on me and I have to think about what I’m going to do now,” she said.

Maxine recalled her life and has decided not too much will change.

“I’ve got a good life,” she said. “I’ve got five children. I’ve got grandchildren. I have a great-grandson.

“I know I want to help my kids. They all have had their struggles. But my husband has always said you have to teach them, not carry them. They won’t grow if we carry them.”

First of all Maxine is going to make sure Albert moves right over to be with her.

Then, she plans to buy a plot of land.

“We all grew up as a family,” she remembered of her childhood in Spokane. “Everybody had their own houses but we all lived a block away from one another. That’s what I would like to do now. When I buy some property to build my home I’m going to buy enough land so if my children want to build there, I have some land to give.”

Washington state’s newest millionaire said it wasn’t the money, in the end, that she thought most about. It was what the money meant for her husband, her children and her family life in the years ahead.

She thought about the days her mother and her family lived in Peaceful Valley, close to one another, seeing one another, part of each other’s lives.

That’s what she hopes her money will buy.

“That and a new truck,” Maxine said.

“My kids already are asking me about my old truck, a ‘91 Chevy. It’s a good truck. They wondered what would happen to it. I told them I’m going to trade it in and get a new truck. If they want a truck they are going to go and buy one.”

In the background, her children and grandchild laughed.

Albert laughed.

Good times have come to Maxine Salinas and her family.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears Sundays on Perspective.