Patience Pays Off For $6 Million Lottery Winner

For the last five years, Patricia Johnson has played the same combinations of numbers in hopes of winning the Washington State Lottery.

On Saturday night, her perseverance paid off.

Johnson, 59, of Bellevue won $6 million with the numbers 2-5-11-16-28-44.

“I knew the odds were great,” she said Monday, just before picking up the first of 20 annual checks for $216,000 at the Georgetown lottery office.

Arden Johnson, 63, chuckled when someone asked how his wife of 43 years took the news when she dialed the toll-free number Saturday to find out the winning numbers.

“I thought she was having a heart attack,” he said. “She was jumping up and down and out of breath.”

With the windfall, Johnson plans to quit her job as an executive secretary at Paccar headquarters while her husband winds down his career as an aircraft machinist.