PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Five more lucky lotto players are heading into the holidays with a little extra cash in their pockets.

According to state lottery officials, the big winning tickets were sold around Arizona, each worth $50,000.

The tickets were sold at:

• Goldfield Chevron
  • 3265 S. Goldfield Rd, Apache Junction, AZ
• Circle K
  • 2088 W. Orange Grove Rd, Tucson, AZ
• QuikTrip
  • 918 E. Baseline Rd, Tempe, AZ
• Desert Springs Travel Center
  • 4031 Fleet St., Littlefield, AZ
• Terrible’s
  • 19985 N. Hwy 93, White Hills, AZ

The winning numbers from Monday’s drawing were 3, 18, 36, 41, 54 and Powerball 7. Nine $1 million tickets were sold nationwide.

The jackpot remains unclaimed and is estimated at $1.7 billion — the fourth largest ever — with the next drawing set for Christmas Eve.

Powerball tickets cost $2 per play, with odds of winning the jackpot sitting at 1 in 292.2 million, according to the lottery.

More information on games and prizes can be found on the Arizona Lottery website.

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Melodee Buzzard, the 9-year-old whose disappearance was reported by Santa Barbara County educators in October, has been found dead, a relative confirmed to The Times on Tuesday.

Melodee vanished during an unusual road trip with her mother earlier this year, sparking a months-long investigation.

Her disappearance captivated and confounded true crime watchers around the nation as FBI investigators and armchair detectives alike tried to solve the puzzle of what happened.

On Tuesday, Melodee’s paternal grandmother confirmed to The Times that her body has been found by investigators.

“The detective called me this morning to let me know that they found the baby and the baby is with her dad,” said Melodee’s grandmother Lilly Denes. “I knew he was telling me that the baby is dead.”

Melodee’s father, Rubiell “Pinoy” Meza, died in a motorcycle accident in 2016.

Local TV news station KSBY captured video of Melodee’s mother Ashlee Buzzard being taken into custody shortly before 7:45 a.m. Tuesday. During the road trip earlier this year, Buzzard changed out the license plates on her rental car and wore wigs in what detectives described as possible attempts to avoid detection, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has planned a 2 p.m. news conference to provide updates on the case. Here is what we know about the events that led up to Tuesday’s tragic discovery.

Ashlee Buzzard’s ‘hard knock’ childhood

When Ashlee Buzzard was just 9 years old — the same age as her daughter Melodee when she went missing — she and her mother, Lori Miranda, became homeless after fleeing Buzzard’s abusive father, Miranda told the Santa Maria Times in 1995.

The article, titled “Lessons From the School of Hard Knocks,” describes how Miranda and her daughter arrived on the streets of Santa Maria with no job, home or car and only $40 to support them.

They had previously moved from place to place to get away from Miranda’s husband, who she said struggled with substance use and episodes of violence. In June 1994, Miranda decided to take her daughter from Orange County to the Central Coast to be farther away from him, and they briefly lived at the Good Samaritan Shelter in Santa Maria before moving into an apartment.

“I was so scared,” Ashlee told the paper, describing her early days in Santa Maria. “I knew no one [here]. I felt very uncomfortable.”

According to Melodee’s paternal relatives, Buzzard had a contentious relationship with her mother.

When Buzzard was in the 11th grade at Santa Maria High School, she filed a petition to be emancipated from Miranda, according to court records. The judge rejected the petition, noting that Buzzard was still living with her mother and had not submitted adequate information pertaining to her income and expenses.

A birth and a sudden death

Melodee was born Feb. 10, 2016, to Buzzard and Meza. Six months later, Meza died.

In Melodee’s early years, Meza’s family continued to have a relationship with the girl, according to Denes. She was a lovable child, always smiling and well-behaved, Denes said.

In 2021, another of Denes’ sons took care of Melodee while Buzzard was hospitalized for several weeks, she said.

During this period, Denes said she was working with social services to gain custody of Melodee as she was concerned about Buzzard’s ability to care for the child. But before Denes had finished the background check process, Buzzard was discharged from the hospital, picked up her daughter from school and left Santa Maria, Denes said.

After that, Buzzard relocated to the nearby neighborhood of Vandenberg Village and refused to let the girl’s paternal relatives see her. She did, however, occasionally visit Denes to ask for money over the years, Denes said.

Federal court records show that Buzzard filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2017. She’s also had five collections and one small claims lawsuit for alleged unpaid debts filed against her in Santa Barbara County Superior Court, the most recent of which was filed by Capital One Bank in May.

In August, Buzzard enrolled Melodee in an independent study program at the Lompoc Unified School District. Sheriff’s detectives believe that she had previously been homeschooling the girl for several years, but the California Department of Education has no record of her submitting the required paperwork to do so, according to a department spokesperson.

A strange cross-country road trip

Melodee Buzzard was captured on surveillance camera apparently wearing a wig at a car rental location in Lompoc on Oct. 7.

(Santa Barbara County Sheriff)

On Oct. 7, Buzzard and Melodee left their Vandenberg Village home and traveled to Nebraska, according to the Sheriff’s Office. During the trip, Buzzard switched out the California license plates (9MNG101) on the car with New York plates (HCG9677). When she returned home Oct. 10, the original plates were reaffixed, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Both Melodee and Buzzard were apparently wearing wigs during the journey and the mother reportedly changed wigs throughout, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The last confirmed sighting of Melodee was on Oct. 9, when she was seen on surveillance video near the Utah-Colorado border.

The investigation

On Oct. 14, school administrators reported Melodee’s prolonged absence from her independent study program to the Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators then visited Buzzard’s home, where the mother refused to answer questions about her daughter’s whereabouts, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

On Oct. 30, the FBI joined the case and assisted the Sheriff’s Office in serving search warrants for Buzzard’s home, the rental car and a storage locker.

Detectives then mapped out Buzzard’s road trip route and focused on the return route, from where Melodee was last seen in Utah to Vandenberg Village.

Investigators believe that Buzzard traveled through the following areas on or around Oct. 9: Green River, Utah; Panguitch, Utah; Northwest Arizona; Primm, Nev.; Rancho Cucamonga.

(Santa Barbara County Sheriff)

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During October, relatives and concerned community members often gathered around Buzzard’s home, chanting, “Where is Melodee” and leaving posters with messages such as “Bring her home.” The investigation became a national sensation, with videos produced by true crime sleuths racking up thousands of views on TikTok and Instagram.

Buzzard arrested following accusations of false imprisonment

Buzzard was arrested Nov. 7 in an incident unrelated to the investigation into her daughters disappearance, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

She was accused of unlawfully violating the personal liberty of Tyler S. Brewer after disclosing sensitive information to him.

Brewer, a paralegal and acquaintance of Buzzard, said in a statement that he visited Buzzard at her home to offer assistance in the search for the missing girl, and that the situation quickly escalated.

But at a hearing in November, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge dismissed the case after new evidence came to light that called his version of events into question.

“After the initial report to law enforcement and the filing of the complaint, further investigation yielded additional evidence that was contradictory to the information that was initially provided to detectives,” said Amber Frost, a spokesperson for the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office.

“That evidence was brought out at the hearing and inconsistencies were examined by both sides. Ultimately, it was determined that the evidence was not sufficient to move this case forward to trial,” Frost said.

Times staff writer Terry Castleman contributed to this report.

While some of the wolves are part of Colorado’s four packs establishing territories in Pitkin, Jackson, Routt and Rio Blanco counties, others continue to search the landscape for mates and suitable food sources and habitat. 

Largely, however, wolf exploration of Colorado remains within similar northern counties in December, according to the latest wolf activity map shared by Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Dec. 23. 

The map — which shows the watersheds where the state’s collared gray wolves were located between Nov. 25 and Dec. 19 — shows that wolves continue to be most active in the northwest, while  also pushing into watersheds to the south and east. 

While the map continues to show activity in some Front Range area watersheds within Larimer, Denver, Boulder and Jefferson counties, the agency reported that “no wolves have crossed I-25 or spent time near urban centers.” 

If a watershed is highlighted, it means that at least one GPS point from one wolf was recorded in that watershed during the 30 days. GPS points are recorded every four hours or so. The latest map also shows activity in Routt, Rio Blanco, Eagle, Jackson, Larimer, Grand, Summit, Gilpin, Clear Creek, Park, Lake, Chaffee, Gunnison, Garfield, Saguache, Rio Grande and Conejos counties.   

While wolves have been exploring southern watersheds for months, Colorado saw its first wolf enter New Mexico and be returned by the southwestern state’s wildlife agency in December. Colorado has an agreement with Utah, New Mexico and Arizona in which any gray wolves from Colorado that enter these three states can be captured and returned to Parks and Wildlife. 

According to Parks and Wildlife, the male gray wolf was among those born to the Copper Creek pack in 2024 and dispersed from the pack in the fall. Dispersal is common for young wolves as they leave their birth pack, attempt to make it on their own and search for a mate. The animal was released in Grand County — a decision that sparked concerns from state and local elected officials as well as some wildlife advocates — in a location reportedly distanced from livestock and near to an unpaired female wolf as well as prey populations.  

The watershed map shows that there was wolf activity in Conejos County along the New Mexico state border. It also shows wolf activity brushing up against the Wyoming border. Parks and Wildlife does not have an agreement with its northern neighbor. Instead, wolves that enter Wyoming lose their protections as an endangered species and can be hunted in the vast majority of the state. Three of Colorado’s reintroduced wolves have died after going north. 

Colorado is nearly two years into its reintroduction of gray wolves, releasing a total of 25 wolves. Four packs had pups this year, but Parks and Wildlife has not released minimum counts of new wolf pups for all the packs. It says it will release the count in its annual wolf report, released each spring. Eleven wolf deaths have been confirmed. 
While the agency was looking to conduct its third year of wolf releases in the southwest this winter, Parks and Wildlife has yet to secure a source of wolves. The agency had planned to return to British Columbia; however, the federal government, under a new director, said it could no longer import the wolves from outside the country.