"We spent too much," he conceded. "I have a fourth grader, an eighth grader and a girl who just finished high school. I should have kept working and put the money in bonds."
Mrs. Martin recalled the summer night in 1998 when the family was having a spaghetti dinner at home in Paso Robles, in central California, and a bank representative called to ask where to wire the money. "It seemed like an unbelievable amount," she said regretfully.
This story is heartbreaking on so many levels. Broken families, broke families. Bad advice. Shattered dreams. It's all there. I suppose it's easy to call them greedy and be done with it but the numbers don't lie. People who come into large amounts of money suddenly are usually broke fairly quickly. For fun, look up the last 20 lottery winners. Come back and tell us how many are broke.
This whole story is just sad.