Forever Changed by PCH – Joseph Beane’s Winner Story
Hi everyone! This is Matt K from PCH Creative. We’ve all seen the winning moments of our fantastic SuperPrize winners on TV or maybe even on YouTube. But what happens when the Prize Patrol leaves and the winner is Forever Changed with this incredible windfall of serious money? For a few more weeks, I’ll be interviewing some of our past winners and asking them what DID happen after the Prize Patrol van rolled away! We’ll find out how they reacted, how their lives were transformed, and what they can do now that they couldn’t have done before. Let’s start with this week’s ironically humorous profile with Joseph Beane, a SuperPrize winner from 2010!
Before he won, Joseph Beane had been a loyal Publishers Clearing House entrant for many years. But even before he started entering, Joe had been familiar with PCH for another ironic reason – he was a United States Postal Service employee! Yes, you heard that correctly. Joe was a letter carrier who actually won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes! Yup, not very many people can claim to have handled (and helped enter) so many PCH envelopes in their lives, but Joe certainly can!
When I spoke with Joe, I asked him to recount the day that Dave and Danielle showed up in town. “Actually, I had received a letter from PCH the previous week that stated I was one of several hundred people that were already guaranteed a $1,000.00 prize, AND that I was still in the running for the $1 Million. My roommate was sure I was going to win, but I didn’t believe it!”
Then one day while out on the job, Joe received a phone call from a “delivery” person asking him to stay where he was so that he could receive a package. The other person on the end of the phone was actually our own Dave Sayer, from the Prize Patrol Elite team. Dave will sometimes do this to make sure our lucky winners stay where they are — who knew that giving away millions of dollars was such hard work!?
But what Dave didn’t know was that, as a letter carrier, Joe happened to know the names and voices of all the other delivery guys in town! Lucky for Dave, Joe decided he’d take a chance and agreed to park his truck while he waited for this “special delivery” to arrive.
When that moment came, Joe found himself speechless. “It was hard to even sign the papers they gave me,” he confesses. “My hands were still shaking!”
What was even more amazing is that after the Prize Patrol left, Joe still had to return to work and finish delivering the mail! Remember that old saying about the Post Office, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow”? Well, I guess you can add “nor winning the Publishers Clearing House SuperPrize” to that list!
In fact, when I caught up with Joe Beane last week, he told me he hasn’t stopped delivering the mail. Oh sure, he’s taken some breaks to travel (Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, and his favorite, Bora Bora), but for the most part Joe has kept his life pretty mellow.
He’s given back by helping out his neices and nephews and local veteran charities, and hopes to continue to help all of them in the future. But Joe is also planning on a nice early retirement.
“I’m thinking 2020 sounds like a good year to retire,” says Joe. “I try to stay pretty conservative with my money. I thought about maybe buying a motorcycle, but I’m still driving the same car I bought when I won. That being said, it takes a lot of restraint to keep from buying things all the time!”
Who would have thought that after all those years of delivering Publishers Clearing House envelopes, Joe would eventually be a winner! That just goes to show you, it could happen to anyone – even YOU!
Matt K.
PCH Creative
P.S. All this talk of letter carriers got me thinking. How do you enter the PCH Sweepstakes? Through the mail or online? Tell us in the comments below!
P.P.S. If you want a winner story of your own, you better enter! There are only 8 days left to enter to win $7,000 A Week For Life!
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