If you won the lottery, how would your life change?

How would you spend the money?

Whether it’s just wishful thinking in your own mind or your answer to a “what if” conversation, most of us give at least a fleeting thought to the question of what we would do if we won the lottery.

It’s one thing if it’s all make believe.

But if you really won the lottery and it was no longer make believe, how would your life change?

Some say their life wouldn’t change in a significant way. They think the only difference would be that they could buy more and do more.

Yet, past lottery winners say their life changed in significant ways they never imagined.

Reporter Brent Gallagher did a most comprehensive investigative study into how the lives of lottery winners changed.

He looked into what they did with their lottery winnings and what changes it brought.

One surprising fact he found is that 70 percent of lottery winners lose all their money within a few years. He claims that even some millionaires that won the lottery went bankrupt.

But perhaps the most astonishing story behind a past lottery winner was that of Mark Hill and his wife Cindy.

In November of 2012 the Dearborn, Missouri, residents won a staggering $587.5 million Powerball jackpot. They were one of two Powerball winners. The odds were one in 300 billion that one winner would take home the whole pot. Two winners split the $587.5 Powerball jackpot.

At the time 52-year-old Mark and 51-year-old Cindy were struggling financially. Mark worked as a factory machinist. Cindy was laid off from her job as an office manager and was working part time as a waitress.

With three grown sons, they had just adopted a daughter from China.

According to the reporter, in their small town of Dearborn, Missouri, most residents lived on around $22,000 a year. The Hills were making slightly less because Cindy wanted to adjust her hours to take care of her newly adopted daughter.

Cindy admits that the night before the Powerball drawing she talked with her daughter about how nice it would be to be able to take family trips. She had purchased five lottery tickets.

When she went to the convenience story the next day to check the winning ticket, she called her husband to say she thought she was having a heart attack because she might have the winning lottery ticket.

She called her mother-in-law, Shirley, to check the ticket.

When it was determined Cindy and her son would take home $192,750,000 in a lump-sum payment, Shirley Hill had one wish for her son.

“I hope he stays grounded, stays humble and doesn’t forget who we are,” she said.

Like other lottery winners, Cindy and Mark Hill had people wondering how their lives would change with their winnings.

The answer: Not at all.

Mark always said if he won the lottery he would buy a red Camaro.

He never bought the car.

Instead he bought a sewage treatment plant for his hometown. With a population of under 500, the working class community of Camden Point, Missouri, could never afford the needed plant.

Instead of buying luxuries for themselves, Mark and Cindy opted for projects to help their community.

In addition to giving $50,000 toward the sewage plant, they donated $5 million dollars to the Dearborn Fire Department to build a new fire station and buy a new ambulance.

Mark said his parents were saved twice by the firefighters and moving the fire station and ambulance would enable responders to provide help faster service to the community.

They also paid for a new ball field for the community and established a fund for lunch money and college scholarships at their high school.

What they didn’t do was to change their lifestyle. Mark continues to drive a pickup truck and meet his longtime buddies for morning coffee at the local convenience store.

Mark passed away several years after winning the lottery but his legacy lives on.

OK, here’s a lottery related question.

If you made an offhand promise to a friend to share any lottery winnings would you honor that promise decades later?

Thomas Cook told his fishing buddy, Joe Feeny, he would share any lottery winnings with him.

When Cook won $22 million in a Powerball lottery two years ago, he called his fishing buddy to say he was sharing his winnings, as he promised. Each got $5.7 million.

Coincidentally, the week I read about this there was an Associated Press story about a lawsuit because a woman refused to share her lottery winnings, as promised.

I don’t know the particulars but I do know people like Mark and Cindy Hill and Tom Cook aren’t all that common.

So, what would you do with the money if you won a big lottery?

I would start a charity to help feed and house the poor, naming my daughter Maria to head the charity.

The money wouldn’t last long because Maria is fast to give everything away. She can’t walk by a homeless person without emptying her wallet.

My lottery dream could never happen. I will never win a lottery for one simple reason: I never play.

So, what’s your lottery dream?

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.