In the words of a famous TV sleuth, “I love a mystery!” And, my dear readers, I truly do! I feel like every time we have a new prize winner at Publishers Clearing House, it’s like a new puzzle to solve!

Questions come flooding in my mind like:

“Where does the prize winner live?”
“How often do they enter?”
“What are they going to do with the money?”

So when we started promoting our PCHSearch&Win Mystery Mania event, I thought it was one of the best names ever! I followed the event closely and was so excited when we received the notice that Howie would be hitting the road to award the Prize.

The prize winner was Tom M., from Lebanon, TN, and Howie arrived at Tom’s home on August 2nd.

Howie said that Tom was “completely shocked” and said “Are you kidding? This is just like on TV!”

Now many winners are still in complete and total disbelief until they have something in writing that “proves it” to them. As if having a camera crew with a big check wasn’t enough, right? Let’s just say it doesn’t really start to sink in until the “cold hard cash” is in their hands, and in this case, it takes the form of an actual real live check!

“Tom was in total disbelief until I handed him the real check,” Howie said. “He couldn’t wait to tell his wife when she came home from work.”

Well, eventually Tom’s wife DID come home. I can only imagine what she said when he showed her the real check (and of course the BIG Check…and balloons, champagne and roses!), and what he said about her was very sweet:

“My plans are basically [to do] what she says she wants to do with it!”

Eventually they settled on the idea of buying a new vehicle, but not before telling Howie he had plans to take his wife out to a nice meal.

“I’m in shock. I never thought it was ever going to happen. You play these things for years and you don’t expect to win, but you keep playing anyways. If you don’t play, you don’t have a chance. I figured, ‘What the heck. You don’t have anything to lose.’”

Tom has been entering for almost 40 years! He’s been entering for quite a while, but recently decided to up his entry activity to four times a day.

His advice for others is to enter as often as you can, because “dreams do come true”!

Do you think that dreams can come true? Are you a believer like Tom? If you want to treat people to dinner and buy a new vehicle, winning something like the “Mystery Mania” prize is definitely a way to make that happen! But you’ll only ever be selected a winner if you have an entry in the running…so get those entries in TODAY!

Matt “The Stats Man”