She Puts $9 in Vegas Slot, Takes Home $1.8 Million

LAS VEGAS —  A 62-year-old Dallas bank teller won $1.8 million after investing only $9 in a slot machine in downtown’s Glitter Gulch early today and said it ended any worries over Social Security.

“I just know I won’t have any Social Security problems,” Ann Bailey joked when asked what she would do with the money she won before dawn at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino.

“Do you plan to quit gambling?” Golden Nugget Chairman Steve Wynn asked as he presented the winner a check.

“No, but I may quit work,” she laughed.

Still obviously shaken by the new wealth, Bailey said fate played a hand in her giant jackpot.

“Someone else was playing the one (machine) I was headed for,” she said. “So I thought, ‘I’ll just give this one a whirl.’ Four nuggets came up and I couldn’t figure out what had happened.”

She hit the winning jackpot on the third pull at the dollar progressive machine.

The divorced mother of two called her son and daughter, then spent a couple of hours trying to sleep, “but mainly just tossing and turning.”

She called her employer later this morning to break the news and said he was flying out to Las Vegas later in the day.

Bailey said she spends one week in the spring and two weeks in the fall in Las Vegas, and limits her gambling to slot machines and an occasional whirl at the roulette wheel.

Wynn said Bailey’s $1.8-million pull was captured on a videotape that keeps a record of play at all large jackpot machines.

“She came around the corner (of the casino), pulled the machine three times, then came right off of her chair and out of camera range,” he laughed.