Vashon pair shares their Lotto luck with others

We all deserve to win the big jackpot, I guess, but some of us deserve it a little more.

On Sunday afternoon, Bob Capps and I sit on the porch of his mobile home on Vashon Island and he tells me about life after winning $12 million in the Washington Lotto. As you read this, two and a half weeks will have gone by since he and his wife, Judy, stopped having to live with donated furniture, desperately trying to figure out how to make health-insurance premiums or pay the phone bill.

Now, Bob can do something like this: Cut a check for $10,000 for Mike who works at the local Thriftway, where Bob usually bought the tickets. They had a ritual. Bob would wave the tickets and tell Mike, "You're going to Paris when I hit the Lotto." Now Mike can use the money for Paris or, more likely, a new truck. Bob kept his word.

When the latest issue of the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber arrived in the mail, I immediately recognized Bob in the front-page photo. I tried countryside living for a little while on Vashon before the ferry commute won out. But I still like to read what's going on.

Here was the Bob who worked at the King County dump on the island until he retired last November, the friendly guy at the scale booth. He remembers me when I finally tell him I'm the guy with the 1972 blue Ford pickup, sometimes making the garbage run with my dog Sammy alongside. Bob always gave out dog biscuits as treats.

As I drove up the gravel road to the Capps' home, a cop inside his county police car gave me a long lookover. They're keeping an eye on the Capps, making sure Bob, 63, and his wife, Judy, 58, are OK. Not that the locals have intruded on the couple.

The phone calls asking for money, with special deals on how the couple can invest their fortune, have all come from off island. Maybe 500 phone calls, Bob says, so many that his phone went on the blink.

Now he's got voice mail and the calls are getting screened - the one from a guy wanting to buy a farm and hoping that Bob would chip in; the one from a guy saying his wife was in the hospital; the guy saying he has a sick wife and three children and could use $3,000 or $4,000. Bob has no idea if their stories are real or not.

That's why Bob is real glad that at his local bank they're taking care of the $4.3 million the couple ended up with, after choosing the 50 percent cash option and paying taxes.

"I've never been a millionaire," Bob says. "If I was handling the money, I'd have given it away." He certainly is giving away a sizable amount.

The way it's been set up, a number of island service institutions, from those helping seniors to Pet Protectors, will immediately get money, and then annual payments from the profits of an investment fund. In addition, a sizable number of their relatives will be getting lump sums of money. Another chunk of their winnings will be invested and they will live off the income from that - around $17,700 a month.

"This is a little embarrassing," Bob says about the $17,700. "It's more than anyone needs to live on." $17,700!

Bob and Judy remember very well living on his $14-an-hour wage, with Judy not able to work after her arms were ruined with carpal-tunnel syndrome. Years of working as a typist did that. At one point, they had to declare bankruptcy. At the same time, they were helping Bob's 83-year-old mother, who needs a wheelchair and walker to get around.

Want to hear more hard times? During the bad floods of 1996, they were living in a mobile home by the Puyallup River. They lost everything except for their two cats and Bibles.

Bob shows me the Bible he escaped with as the waters rose. He is a born-again Christian. Nearly every page is annotated. He opens a page to the words he has copied, "Blessed be the poor hungry who sorrow - for ye shall laugh."

Bob tears up from reading those words and becomes embarrassed at his show of emotion. He lights up a Marlboro. "I'm 63, darn it, and I'm a softie," he says. "Oh, excuse me. Ohh . . ."

Bob tells me the story of how he came about buying that winning Lotto ticket.

"How can I say this without looking like a nut? Two months ago, a voice in me told me to start using the card," he says.

The card contained his pre-chosen Lotto numbers for two $5 tickets, 20 numbers in all. Some of the numbers were chosen at random; some, like 07 or 17, were chosen because "7 is the Lord's number." One reason for choosing the number 12 was the 12 Apostles, another because Bob likes the Johnny Mathis song, "Twelfth of Never."

Because of hard finances, Bob hadn't been spending $10 for each of the twice-weekly drawings. Judy urged her husband, "Why not? It gives you a chance to dream."

At 7 p.m. on July 22, Bob was watching the Lotto drawing on television, jotting down the winning numbers: 05 07 12 17 27 49. He sat stunned. Then he handed the ticket to Judy. She sat stunned. One $12 million winner. Them.

They've treated themselves a bit in the past 17 days. They spent $2,000 for a night at the Presidential Suite at the Westin Hotel, plus various gift-shop charges. "We sat there at midnight, eating ice cream," Bob tells me. They have gone to a few restaurants, something they never did. Bob bought some clothes. He hadn't purchased a T-shirt in four years. They'll be buying a new Lincoln Navigator that they hope will serve to transport Bob's mom, and Bob plans to completely restore the faithful 1982 Oldsmobile that has served him for 231,000 miles. "It's part of me," he says.

In a few weeks, the Capps plan to move to a home ("under $1 million") they're about to purchase near Olympia after only two days of looking. When you've got the cash, you buy a home in two days. It sits on five acres and Bob plans for his mother and a nurse to have quarters at the home. They've decided not to stay in Vashon because it has no hospital - Bob has been hospitalized five times in recent years with what he thought were heart attacks, but was stress-related. And Bob has grown weary of the ferry commute. You wait two hours only to find the ferry is full. No more.

Their new home comes with a pond and waterfall. Bob says that on a nice day like today, he plans to spend the first hour after he wakes reading the Bible. Then he plans to take a can of pop from the refrigerator.

"I'll sip my drink and sit by the waterfall and think how lucky we are," he says.

I tell Bob it sounds like he's got his priorities right.

Bob goes into the mobile home, which the couple is selling cheap to a family with seven children, the Capps carrying the contract themselves. He brings out some dog biscuits.

He's seen my dog in the car, waiting patiently. For three decades, Bob would buy biscuits himself to give out at the scale booth. Old habits die hard.

Erik Lacitis' column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. His phone number is 206-464-2237. His e-mail address is: elacitis@seattletimes.com.