St. Paul man wins more than $750,000 playing Wild Cherry at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel

PRIOR LAKE, Minn. – He called his friends, he called his family, he called his wife. No one would believe him.

At 10:48 p.m. on Monday, July 12, St. Paul resident Dick Warwick won the $766,094 Wild Cherry progressive jackpot at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel. After shaking his own astonishment, Warwick spent the remainder of a whirlwind night and the next morning spreading the good news.

Warwick reiterated over and again that a simple $2 push of a button earned him nearly three quarters of a million dollars.

“One of my best friends said, ‘no, you didn’t win that, you’re lying. Nobody wins that amount,’” Warwick recounted. “I said, ‘well, take the nobody out of your system and put my name in there.’”

The 60-year-old, less than six months from retirement, said he loves playing the progressive machines at Mystic Lake. He dreamed of one day winning a jackpot.

“When it came, it seemed like it was a dream,” Warwick said. “That disbelief, thinking it can’t be me. It has not sunk in as to what this means because it’s such a large amount.”

He put a pair of $20 bills into the Wild Cherry machine on Monday night and it led to more than even he could imagine.

Warwick knew that just one push of a button could make his dream come true.

“All it takes,” Warwick said, “is one spin.”

Warwick joins a growing list of Wild Cherry progressive winners including Rebecca Berry who won $1.3 million in 2009.