Woman bets extra $6, wins record $34.9 million jackpot

Tim Dahlberg

Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 | 9:29 a.m.

Cynthia Jay was scheduled to work today bringing drinks to gamblers at a Strip casino. Her boss should understand why she won't be in again.

Jay hit the richest jackpot ever Wednesday night, a $34,955,489 payout at the Desert Inn hotel-casino that effectively ended her career as a cocktail waitress.

"I won't be doing that anymore," she said.

Had Jay followed her normal routine, she wouldn't have been standing inside the Desert Inn on Thursday holding an oversized check for her winnings.

But she was, thanks to an extra $6 she put in a Megabucks slot machine.

"I had played the $21 I usually play and I turned around and was going to leave," Jay said. "Then I said I'm going put $6 more in and the last $3 was the one that did it."

The 37-year-old went to the hotel with her boyfriend, Terry Brennan, to see a lounge show.

Jay spent a total of $27 before lining up three Megabucks symbols to win a jackpot that had been the talk of the state as it kept rising the last several months.

"It's unbelievable. I've been in shock," Jay said. "I didn't sleep much last night."

Jay, who said she regularly plays $21 on Megabucks when the jackpots get big, said she and Brennan had seen the Bob Anderson show at the Desert Inn hotel-casino and then she went out and played a machine just outside the lounge show entrance.

She wasn't sure she had hit the jackpot when she lined up the symbols, then raised her arms in glee.

"She was hyperventilating," Brennan said.

She said she plans to share the jackpot with Brennan, a fellow worker at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino.

"He's definitely got his share of the money coming," Jay said.

Asked if that meant half, Jay nodded her head yes.

Jay, who has five sisters and three brothers, said she had long dreamed of winning enough money to treat her family to nice things. She said the money might change her some, but that she would remain loyal to the people she knows and loves.

"The people I had in my life last week are going to be the people in my life next week," she said.

The Desert Inn gave Jay one of its plush suites for the night, but she went home after sleeping only about an hour so she could prepare for meeting the press.

"They wrote me a check that I have in my purse but it's not like I have any money yet," she said.

Megabucks spokeswoman Lynn Purdue said Jay was given a check for $1,402,188, the first of 25 annual installment payments. She said Jay has 60 days to decide whether to take the money in payments or take a lump sum, which would be between 55 and 60 percent of the total.

Megabucks is a linked jackpot system operated by International Gaming Technology in 153 Nevada casinos. It is reset at $7 million after it is hit, then grows progressively as more people play it.

The jackpot requires a play of three $1 coins to win.

The previous world record payoff was a $27.5 million hit on Nov. 15, 1998, at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. In June, 1999, an Illinois man won $21.3 million playing Megabucks at Caesars Palace.