DARLINGTON, S.C.
Maryland resident Kathryn Cooley said that her family always laughed when she entered any type of sweepstakes.
"My family always teases me that I enter everything, but I had never won anything," she said.
They all stopped laughing when NASCAR driver Jeff Burton showed up on her doorstep with the keys to a new Monte Carlo SS, painted to match Burton's No. 31 Prilosec OTC Car.
Burton also presented Cooley with tickets for four to 20 Sprint Cup races, VIP passes to go with each ticket, first-class airline tickets to and from the races, accommodations while attending the races, a $700 traveling stipend for each race and a $20,000 cash prize.
"Everybody said, ‘I didn't think anybody even won those prizes,'" she said.
It all began one day when she was clipping coupons for Prilosec and she saw the form to enter to win the grand prize.
Cooley said that when she first received notification that she was a finalist for the grand prize, she took her documents to her local bank to be notarized, but the teller, a personal friend of Cooley's, refused to do it.
"She said, ‘This is identity theft; they're asking for your license, your Social Security number,' and she flatly refused to notarize them," Cooley said.
Proctor and Gamble had to call the bank to confirm that the prize was real and not a scam.
Cooley said that the day Burton showed up on her doorstep was one that she will not soon forget.
"It was early in the morning," she said. "When I answered the door, instead of saying how nice it was for him to be there, I said ‘You're supposed to be in Florida.'"
She said that was the first thing on her mind because she knew that the time trials were going on that day in Florida.
Cooley, 64, a mother of two and grandmother of four, said she wasn't even a fan of Burton's before the sweepstakes, but she is now.
■ Jamie Durant is a staff writer with
The Florence News
in Florence, S.C.
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