Sharon Tirabassi won $10.5 million in the lottery but quickly spent most of it on lavish gifts for friends and family as well as a huge house and cars, leaving her now living paycheck to paycheck; Ihsan Khan won $55 million in the lottery, gave up his job as a taxi driver, was elected mayor in his hometown where he used some of the money to help with earthquake relief, but his bid for parliament was unsuccessful.
Sharon Tirabassi won $10.5 million in the lottery but quickly spent most of it on lavish gifts for friends and family as well as a huge house and cars, leaving her now living paycheck to paycheck; Ihsan Khan won $55 million in the lottery, gave up his job as a taxi driver, was elected mayor in his hometown where he used some of the money to help with earthquake relief, but his bid for parliament was unsuccessful.
Sharon Tirabassi won $10.5 million in the lottery but quickly spent most of it on lavish gifts for friends and family as well as a huge house and cars, leaving her now living paycheck to paycheck; Ihsan Khan won $55 million in the lottery, gave up his job as a taxi driver, was elected mayor in his hometown where he used some of the money to help with earthquake relief, but his bid for parliament was unsuccessful.
Sharon Tirabassi won $10.5 million in the lottery but quickly spent most of it on lavish gifts for friends and family as well as a huge house and cars, leaving her now living paycheck to paycheck; Ihsan Khan won $55 million in the lottery, gave up his job as a taxi driver, was elected mayor in his hometown where he used some of the money to help with earthquake relief, but his bid for parliament was unsuccessful.
Nine years after her huge lottery win, Sharon Tirabassi is
catching the bus to her part-time job. Tirabassi, one of the city’s biggest lottery winners, has gone from being very rich to living from pay day to pay day with just enough money.
Before her win, Tirabassi used to live in a small apartment
with her three children and couldn’t afford a car. But in April 2004, she won $10.5 million from a Lotto Super Seven ticket. She was unprepared for the change to her lifestyle. She would take friends on wild shopping trips and pay for everything herself. She and her husband bought a huge house in the wealthiest part of town and owned four cars. Besides the house and the cars, a lot of the cash went to family and friends – too much, as she admits now. She bought several houses in the city, renting them out at affordable rates to her family. A lot of friends suddenly appeared when news broke of her win – and a lot of them she never heard from again.
But all that has changed. Today, Tirabassi is living in a rented house on a quiet industrial street – not far from where she started. She no longer has the expensive cars. These days, she rides an electric bike when she’s not taking the bus.
But she says she’s happier now than she used to be and she lives more fully than she did before. ‘When I had lots of money, I used to spend all my time shopping, but now other things are more important to me.’ Tirabassi is now concentrating on raising her children with good family values. ‘I’m trying to get them to learn that they have to work for money,’ she says.
IHSAN KHAN
Before he won the lottery, Ihsan Khan used to work as a taxi driver and security guard in the USA – first in Chicago and then in Washington. He would usually send most of what he earned back to his family in Pakistan. ‘It was the worst job in the world,’ Khan says now. And then, one night, he had a dream in which he saw diamonds and also a number: 246 1725. He played those numbers on the lottery for 10 years. Then one day he struck lucky. Ihsan Khan won the jackpot and found he had $55 million. He immediately gave up his job as a taxi driver and bought an expensive car and two luxury houses.
But then he did something surprising. Instead of living in the USA and spending money on luxuries, he went back to his hometown of Battagram and ran in the election to become mayor. He saw it as a way to pay back some of what he had gained. Khan believes that it’s wrong to save money for yourself and that we have a responsibility to help others who are not so well off as ourselves. Although he was competing against a candidate whose family had been in local politics for 35 years, Khan was elected mayor. Then, just after he was elected, the region was hit by a huge earthquake which killed 3,000 people in Battagram. Mayor Khan took the opportunity to use his lottery money to help people directly. He spent $300,000 on medicine and on repairs to homes, and he also gave money to build a new school.
But Khan isn’t fully satisfied with what he’s done and feels that simply giving people money is never enough. He used to think he could use his money to fix everything, but he no longer believes that. He has discovered that people are often greedy and they never seem satisfied with what they are given.
In 2008, he resigned as mayor and ran for election to Pakistan parliament, but this time he wasn’t a winner. The winning candidate received over 22,000 votes. Ihsan Khan only received 5,000. It seems his luck had run out. [I couldn’t find a picture of Ihsan Khan. However, you can check out this article by the Washington Post that is about him!]
