$3 million Parker lottery winners plan to make ‘memories of a lifetime’
CHICORA — After Penny Reep purchased a lucky $3 million scratch-off lottery ticket at the Rummy Mart on South Main Street, she said she kept waiting to be woken up from what felt like a dream.
The Armstrong County resident said winning $3 million still felt unreal on Thursday, Nov. 2, after posing with a commemorative Pennsylvania Lottery check in the store surrounded by family, friends and the media.
One of the ways Reep will use the prize money will be to buy a car with third row seating so she can drive all of her grandchildren, she said.
Reep and her husband, Pat, who reside in Parker, have nine grandchildren — five of whom she hasn’t seen in over a year and live in Massachusetts. A trip up north is in the works, she said.
Reep also plans to take a cruise to Alaska, which has been a dream of her husband’s, who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. If they take the trip, Reep said she will also be able to visit family in Juneau she has never met before.
Kathy Crawford, a longtime friend of the family, said she cried when she found out Reep won $3 million. The family has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses to treat Pat Reep’s cancer, she said, which is incurable. He and his wife have both been unable to work because of ongoing health issues.
“We know how long they’ve struggled,” Crawford said.
Sharon Snow, who has owned the Rummy Mart in town with her husband for 16 years, was one of the first people Reep told after she discovered she won.
Reep was a regular customer, Snow said. As time went on, Snow learned about the family’s health troubles.
“You know faces before you know names,” she said. “And then once you know names, you know circumstances.”
“I was so happy for (Reep),” Snow said. “I knew her circumstances ... It’s good it went to someone who needed it.”
