A Lovely Valentine’s Present

Thu., Feb. 20, 1997

Jack Broom Seattle Times

It’s not surprising that Larry Klapperich of Kent, Wash., felt a little sheepish Friday when his wife, Janice, gave him a Valentine’s Day gift and he didn’t have one for her.

Many husbands have made that slip, but few have done a better job of making amends.

After his wife went to work, Klapperich rushed out and bought a card, some potted tulips and a few heartshaped balloons; as an afterthought, he tucked in a Lotto ticket.

He even wrote a sweet note:

“Hope you had a great, great, day today and I hope this ticket makes all your days great.”

It certainly should help. The ticket he gave her turned out to be worth half of Saturday’s $7 million Lotto jackpot. Tuesday, the couple picked up the first of 20 annual checks for $126,000.

“It’s totally crazy. The whole thing,” Janice Klapperich said, her hands trembling as she held the check.

Larry Klapperich, supervisor for a merchant-marine company, and Janice, a secretarial assistant for Weyerhaeuser, are both 52. Both plan to stay on their jobs.

It wasn’t forgetfulness, Larry insisted, that caused him to ignore Valentine’s Day. “At Christmastime we remodeled the house and said we wouldn’t buy each other gifts. I assumed that meant for quite some time.”

But when his wife set a package for him down on the counter Friday, he decided he’d better reciprocate to keep the 30-year marriage intact.

When Janice Klapperich came home from work that day, the rising garage door revealed the balloons-and-flowers surprise.

She was more pleased to get potted tulips than the Lotto ticket.

“I’ve never bought one and I’ve never known anyone who won,” she said.

Sunday morning, she checked the Lotto results in the newspaper and saw it matched her ticket, number for number. “I thought it must be an example line,” she said, and she couldn’t believe her good fortune until she double-checked the results at a store.

Janice Klapperich said even before the Lotto drawing, she felt that she and her husband were very lucky people to have three happily married and successful children and nine grandchildren.

She plans to use some of the money to help her mother and to “take the whole family to Disney World” this summer.

Also Tuesday, Carol and Phil Cherry of Newport, Wash., turned in the other winning ticket and also picked up a $126,000 check. They bought the ticket Saturday while renting videos.

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