Be it envy or some misplaced sense of justice, popular headlines around the lottery blogosphere seem to suggest that there is something else people like more than a lottery rag-to-riches tell. And that’s a story about someone who triumphs over hardship and struggles until one day they strike it rich. But then hastily defy the odds yet again to lose it all.
The Struggle
This rag-to-riches tell begun on a January morning in 2016 when Stephanie Harvell and Mitchell Arnswald were facing a really hard time in their life. The married couple, with two little girls, was living from check to check struggling to make ends meet. And had recently lost their motor vehicle.
In fact, on that fateful morning, their landlord had saved them with a notice to evacuate from their rental home in Bay City, Michigan, because of non-rental payment.
But, instead of crying helplessly in the face of certain homelessness the couple, as if to dare fate, took the next to no money they had on them. Not the best of decisions, if you were to ask me, especially considering the gravity of the situation they were in. However, the couple gambled it. They bought a $5 “Hot Ticket” scratch-off ticket from the Michigan Lottery.
Riches
And imagine the joy when surprise surprise, against all odds, their ticket was a winner. The couple received a $500,000 prize from it. And just like that, they were rich.
Records show that a few months later, husband Mitchell T. Arnswald on May 6, 2016, bought a house on Lauria Road in Bangor Township for $80,000. Finally, they had gotten rid of rags and found riches. Or so they thought.
Rag-to-riches and back again
Little did they know that they would soon be the living testimony of a nightmare series of “rag-to-riches and back again.” For instead of a happy season finale, the couple would be insolvent and thrown in county jail by the police some three years later. They are suspected to have recently gone on a brazen, two-month-long burglary spree that targeted houses around Michigan to try to make ends meet.
