Good Fortune Reader’S Digest Sweepstakes Winner Figured Notice Was Just Another Empty Promise

The good news has arrived in Carl Weyen’s mailbox many times before.

“YOU’VE BEATEN THE ODDS! YOU ARE A WINNER!”

Yeah, right.

Weyen knows that promises of easy money almost always come with a catch. So when yet another envelope arrived a couple weeks back — this one claiming he had won $250,000 — the retired grain farmer didn’t get very excited.

“I laid it aside for a day,” the 76-year-old Valley man said. “I thought maybe it was a joke.”

It wasn’t.

The $250,000 check — which Carl and Thelma Weyen picked up in New York City last week — is very real. So was the carriage ride through Central Park, the sixth-row seats to Phantom of the Opera and the view from their 29th floor room in New York’s Palace Hotel — all compliments of the Reader’s Digest Association.

“They met us with a brass band and about 1,000 people waving at us,” said 72-year-old Thelma Weyen, who still raves about the all-expense-paid trip they received.

The food was so good, she gained three pounds in just three days. Pilots shook her hand when she stepped into first class. Limos whisked her from site to site.

“We weren’t even allowed to open a door,” she exclaimed.

To top it off, they won the sweepstakes without buying a single magazine. Carl returned his entry with the sweepstakes sticker in place, but a definite “no” in the magazine purchase line.

It’s a fact they’re rather proud of.

Carl, his wife said, has always been a conservative spender.

But will their new-found fortune change that?

For many of us, a $250,000 windfall could easily transform itself into a new BMW, a Caribbean cruise, a new wardrobe and a succession of splurges.

What have the Weyens bought? Very little, it turns out.

They purchased a couple of new outfits for their trip to New York. But they’ve also paid off their mortgage. They’ve paid off their 17-year-old grandson’s 1989 Camaro, and covered needed repairs on other relatives’ cars.

More than one-third of the $250,000 prize will be lost to taxes, according to IRS officials. Most of what remains will be socked away.

The prize arrived just when the Weyens needed it most.

Their income - which still comes from the farming of land they own near Reardan, Wash., - has plummeted with wheat prices. Prices have been so low, some farmers are simply sitting on their stored crops, waiting and hoping for prices to go up.

Worried about funding their retirement, the Weyens had talked about looking for jobs. Carl already sells decorative space heaters to bring in extra income.

Now, he said, “We’ll back off on the work, and enjoy life a little more.”

The Weyens’ entry was one of 210 million received by the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes. The magazine publisher awards about 20,000 prizes annually, but it gives half its award money to just four top prize winners. The Weyens were among those lucky four.

They’re not jealous of those who won more. Two of the other Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes winners they met in New York took home $1 million. Other sweepstakes winners have won tens of millions of dollars. Too much money causes problems, the retired farmers said. It changes lives.

And the Weyens don’t want to change.

While they savor their memories of luxury in the Big Apple, the Valley couple was glad to return home last week. They came back to gardening and grandkids and church work.

And, to a new sense of security. “We really did beat the odds,” Carl said.