Michelle Obama, wife of President Barack Obama, will be St. Louis on March 5 as part of a day-long fundraising trip to Missouri, sources close to the campaign have told the Beacon.

Mrs. Obama will be in Kansas City in the morning and then stop by St. Louis in the afternoon for a $150-a-person event at the Peabody Opera House.

The visit comes several months after the president made a similar stop in St. Louis. The fundraising events generally have been private, underscoring that Missouri is primary seen by the Obama campaign as a place to raise money -- not votes.

It happens every time the Powerball jackpot gets up there over the $100 million or $200 million mark.

I’m not much of a gambler, and I know what the odds are of matching the winning numbers. Still, it doesn’t hurt to dream.

I could pay off the mortgage on my house. I could help my daughter wipe out her student loans. We could buy a place up in New York or in California, where our children live. Maybe (maybe?) I could even retire from journalism after more than 40 years and take it easy.

But I’m still here, writing away. Usually, I don’t even remember to buy a ticket, and as they always say, you can’t win if you don’t play.

Sandra Hayes played.

In April 2006, she pitched $5 into a pool with a dozen of her co-workers at a Missouri child support office in north St. Louis County and became part of the Lucky 13 who won a $224 million jackpot from a ticket bought at a Quik Trip. After taking the lump sum and paying taxes, she came away with between $5 million and $7 million — not bad for a twice-divorced single mother of three who had once been on food stamps and suffers from lupus.

Even though she had earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s, winning the lottery provided an eye-opening education for Hayes, a journey that included a reality TV show, reuniting with an old acquaintance who is now her fiancé and the realization that what turned out to be her lucky numbers — 16-26-34-35-41 and a Powerball number of 24 — didn’t always add up to living happily ever after.

Now 51, Hayes has put together her thoughts in a brief book whose title sums up what she has learned and what she hopes she can teach others: “How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life,” with the telling subtitle of “Windfall: A Blessing or a Curse?”

And yes, she still buys lottery tickets and even won $14 once. But no more big jackpots.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You were working for the state, making $25,000 a year, when you became a lottery millionaire. How did your life change, immediately and in the longer term?

Hayes: I was in shock the day I won. I had no idea. You have people calling you at home and telling you that you won the lottery. I didn’t even turn the TV on to make sure it was true. I went into denial and shock. I went to work like I normally do, and as soon as I went to my cubicle and put my purse down, a co-worker came and dragged me into the office manager’s office. When I saw him, I could tell he was really ecstatic. He had tears of joy in his eyes. The lottery commissioner was in his office. I was like, what’s going on. He was like, yes, you won the lottery.

We had to go into Clayton and stay there until the ticket was validated. I couldn’t even drive, so a fellow lottery winner told me to ride with her. That was how I was for the next two years. It was like, I’m going to wake up any minute now and I’m going to be back at work.

How did your spending habits change?

Hayes: I would have big parties at my home. I gradually slowed down and stopped having those big elaborate parties. That’s when I woke up and realized this is real. This is not a dream. This is really happening. Sandra, you’re spending too much money. It’s time to slow down and look at your budget because you want to have this money available when you retire. So I started taking life more seriously. After two years, I realized this was my life.

I grew up. I matured. I’m more laid back than I was back then, but I’m the kind of person who is quick to speak my mind, if I think you’re wrong or trying to put one over on me. I’m a lot smarter than I was before I won the lottery. I’m not as gullible. You have to learn to develop a stiff back, and my back is stiff now. When I first won, I was frightened and very, very cautious.

My life is different because now I live a life of leisure, the life of a retired person. If I decide I want to go out of town for a couple of days or a week, I can do that. I was never able to do that before. I’m able to take my family on vacation. I never had the opportunity to do that when they were growing up. I never had the money. In the long run, it brought me and my children closer. It took a while, because they were in shock, too.

When someone asks you for money, how do you decide whether to give?

Hayes: I have to check out their story. I’ll help people I know personally who need money. I will help them with money and tell them not to worry about paying me back. I know a lady in her 70s who is raising her grandchildren, and I helped her.

On the other hand, a woman whom I have known for years came to my house and said she was about to lose her home because she wasn’t paying her taxes. I went to look her up on a public website and I saw her property taxes were paid up, so I printed out a copy of the report and sent it to her. I didn’t appreciate that. I just avoided her after that point.

I will help the needy, not the greedy, and you find there are a lot of greedy people out there. There have been a lot of emotional changes. Sometimes when I told people no, I felt guilty. But I had to realize that I’m not some type of knight in shining armor. I realized if I gave all my money away, I wouldn’t have anything left to live on.

At a reunion of lottery winners, I was telling someone I feel guilty because I can’t help everybody, and she said let me give you some advice. Your friends, the people you consider friends, are people who would never even consider asking you for money. You can’t be friends with everybody. You have to have friends who won’t ask you for money because that’s what a friend is. Bottom line, she told me, I had to make new friends. I couldn’t feel guilty about saying no. I took that advice, and I have a lot of peace in my life now.

Why did you write the book?

Hayes: A lot of people have a lot of questions for me, and I thought I could answer them if I wrote a book. So I started jotting down my thoughts in 2008, added more in 2009 and when 2010 came around I decided I would publish. It was a lot of pages, and the editorial department told me this was unnecessary, and this was unnecessary — we just want to hear important things, about when you won and how did you feel. They said I should put the other things in a second book.

I’m straight to the point and shoot from the hip. I poured my emotions into what I wrote.

When I was on the reality show, which was filmed in December 2006, I felt disappointed when I watched it because I didn’t like the way they portrayed me. I heard a review on a radio station when a DJ was saying very negative things about me. He doesn’t know me as a person. So when I was fortunate enough that another DJ for the same station called me and interviewed me, I could answer the questions as best I could.

My sisters said the show made me look like a selfish person because I didn’t share or divvy the money up. We didn’t speak for a year.

So winning millions of dollars in the lottery — is it a blessing or a curse?

Hayes: It’s a blessing. It is a blessing. But the whole catch is that you make money, you don’t let the money make you. Money is not evil. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil. You can know that all you want, but unless you walk in it and find that that is what you believe, it means nothing.

After decades of too much spending, the governor told Illinois lawmakers: "Our rendezvous with reality has arrived."

Emergency workers struggled to free dozens more trapped in the lead car.

Friday, I took a hike down to the stream at the bottom of our country property in Wildwood and was shocked to see so many signs of spring in February. The bluebirds and snowdrops had arrived in January, much too early for the normal garden calendar, and tipped us off that things were amiss.

Now, I see a maple tree with its rising sap oozing out of a cut in the bark and a cloud of gnats swarming in a pool of sunshine over the southern spring seep. Most people would enjoy and delight in such observations, but I know through training and experience that untimely appearances such as these often lead to tragic consequences in the landscape.

• If the Japanese maples leaf out too early, they will be turned to wilted spinach by a late, hard freeze as happened just a few years ago.
• If the bluebirds mating in January hatch eggs before the insects to feed them are available, the chicks may die of starvation.

The signs of an early spring are also evident all over town. Yesterday, my husband and I took a walk around our block in the city and saw dandelions, periwinkles and maples already in flower. The buds of the dogwoods and magnolias are swelling in anticipation of bloom. It makes me heartsick to know that a killing freeze will likely come later and mow them all down. These plants have all broken dormancy way too early.

Mother Nature has her annual rhythms and this year they are out of step. January, 2012 has been one of the warmest ever recorded. According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we have just experienced the fourth warmest January in over a century. You can read the entire report, The State of the Climate Global Analysis January 2012, but here is a small excerpt:

Contiguous United States

Climate Summary

January 2012

"The average temperature in January 2012 was 36.3 F. This was 5.5 F warmer than the 1901-2000 (20^th century) average, the 4^th warmest January in 118 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.”

What this information translates into in my garden is a snapping of the strands of the web of life. Fruit trees may bloom early, before the honey bees are active. If that happens, there will be low pollination, poor fruit set and a bad yield for local peaches, apples and apricots. If the weather suddenly turns cold again, even if the flowers have been fertilized, the baby fruits may be killed by frost. And I don’t know when to suggest to my gardening audience that seeds be planted in the vegetable garden. The unpredictability of this season forces us to toss traditional knowledge out of the window.

My itchy gardener’s fingers are telling me to go ahead and plant now those cold-tolerant beets and greens that normally would not go into the ground for another month. It is not just me or the birds and the bees. Whole segments of nature are missing the cues that will make these organisms more vulnerable to damage.

If I plant a few vegetable seeds early, it is only a few dollars and hours of time. If you are a large-scale farmer with acres and acres of land, seed is measured in tons and time for planting hundreds of labor hours. To help us figure out the normal planting times and which plants to grow, though some still use the old school “Farmers’ Almanacs,” most modern farmers and gardeners turn to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for data-based information about degree-days, precipitation records and plant hardiness zone maps (PHZMs).

Many St. Louisans are relishing these unseasonably warm days of sunshine and brilliant blue skies by getting outside to enjoy active exercise or to bask lazily in the bright afternoons at street-side cafes. But we must not forget the dark side of this coin. The seasonal timing of events in the garden and the greater natural world beyond forms part of an elegant, intricate and complicated web with living elements that are highly interdependent upon one another. Our food, our environment, our economy are all intertwined.

So how is the skiing out at Hidden Valley? Are my bulbs going to get bitten by a sudden cold snap? How much flea or mosquito spray are we going to need this year? When should we re-seed the lawn? Indecision for gardeners is just a reflection of the confusion for Mother Nature. This year, she may be completely delusional.