Millionaire back to work
BOISE – A 33-year-old Idaho man who won a state record $220.3 million Powerball lottery jackpot Memorial Day weekend has spent his summer appearing on TV shows, taking friends to Tahiti, fielding marriage proposals from strangers and starting to build a new stadium at his hometown high school.
But now it’s back to work for Brad Duke of Star, a Boise suburb. Earlier this week, he returned to his old job at Gold’s Gym in Meridian, where he teaches a 6 a.m. class on spinning, a workout using stationary bicycles.
“I realized I didn’t need to win the lottery to live the life I dreamed of,” he told the Idaho Statesman.
Brett Howell, Duke’s friend and a manager at the gym, said he hasn’t noticed any changes in Duke’s personality since he became a multimillionaire.
“But I think he is busier now in a lot of ways,” he said. “He just has a lot more options and a lot more fun.”
After concealing his identity following his win, Duke came forward June 16 and opted to take a one-time cash payment equaling about $84 million after taxes. His goal is to invest it to be a billionaire within 15 years. He said he’s earning about $12,000 daily on his investments and holdings.
About half his day is spent signing papers and reviewing documents to create a charitable foundation, as well as fielding hundreds of requests for money. He’s been asked to invest in a flying car, a time machine, a hydrogen-powered locomotive and a small country in Africa that wants to make him their “ambassador.”
He’s working with his brother, a contractor, to build a new sports stadium at his hometown high school in Salmon, an eastern Idaho community at the foot of the Bitteroot Mountains on the Montana border. A fan of the reality TV show “The Amazing Race,” Duke and a colleague from the gym are hoping to enter the televised competition and donate any winnings to charity. He’s also talking with network producers about possibly developing his own reality adventure show.
But he’s abandoned a couple of the items on his original wish list. The private concert with heavy metal band Metallica was scrapped because Duke thought the cost was too high and he’s decided not to buy a bigger house.
“For me, a lot of the simpler things have become pleasures,” he said. “I love my little home.”
He has bought a car for someone, but he declined to say whom he gave the vehicle to. For himself, he splurged on a top-of-the line road-racing bicycle that comes with its own display case.
“That was an expensive bicycle, the best bike you can get,” said Duke, an avid cyclist who owned five mountain bikes before he won the lottery. “I haven’t bought anything else, yet, other than more mountain bike gear and a helmet cam.”