A six-year-old girl may get the pony she has dreamed of owning, thanks to the record Powerball jackpot her family just won.

The Hill family of Dearborn, Mo., who won half of the jackpot worth $587.5 million, appeared at a press conference on Friday with six-year-old Jaiden, who was adopted from China, clutching a stuffed horse as her parents were handed an oversized check made out for their share: $293,750,000.

"We’re still stunned by what’s happened. It's surreal and people keep asking us, 'What are you going to buy with it?' I just want to go home and be back to normal," Cindy Hill, 51, said at the press conference in which she, her husband Mark, their three adult sons and daughter Jaiden were introduced to the nation. 

Since winning, the couple has considered adopting again, according to the lottery. Mark has spoken of getting a red Camaro; they also would like to take Jaiden to the beach, since she's never been to one. And they plan to start college funds for their grandchildren and nieces and nephews, as well as set up a scholarship fund at the local high school in Mark's father's name.

They are also looking forward to not working and traveling together as a family using their winnings, Hill added.

As for the pony, it will be coming -- but later.

"The pony’s not going to be for a while," Cindy said Friday. "I think we’re going to just stick with what we have planned, and maybe after the first year, go on a big vacation.” 

After hearing on Thursday morning that one of the winning tickets was sold in Missouri -- the other was sold in Arizona -- Cindy dropped her Jaiden off at school, went to a convenience store for a winning numbers report, and checked her tickets in her car.

"I didn't have my glasses, and I was thinking, is that the right number? Is that the right number?" Cindy said.

Upon seeing that one of the five tickets she bought had the winning combination, Cindy said she headed straight to her mother-in-law's house and asked her to double-check the ticket. Husband Mark, 52,  joined her there to see for himself.

With the odds of any single ticket winning the jackpot at 1 in 175 million, the Hills said they hardly gave a thought to winning. They spent $10 on tickets Wednesday evening and didn't check them again until Cindy saw they had won Thursday morning.

Cindy was an office manager until she was laid off in 2010; Mark works as a mechanic for Hillshire Brands, according to the Missouri Lottery.

They don't play the lottery often, and don't have any plans to move from Dearborn, a Kansas City suburb.

The couple traveled to Jefferson City, Mo., to meet with lottery officials after discovering they had won. When packing for the trip, Mark, still in shock over the magnitude of their win, said he stopped to buy toothpaste for his travel bag, and said, "I found myself in the store still looking at the prices."

"Old habits are hard to break," he said, adding, "We don't have the money yet!"

Dave Kaup / Reuters

Cindy Hill holds the microphone to six-year old daughter Jaiden, held by husband Mark as sons Jason and Cody, right, look on during a news conference on Friday.

David Troutman, a former high school classmate of the winning couple, said on TODAY that they first posted the news on Facebook.

"I was on Facebook and I saw that his wife had posted, ‘Thank you God, we won the lottery.’ Of course everybody in town, all his friends, gave all thumbs up. It couldn’t have happened to a better guy,’’ Troutman said.

The Hills are high school sweethearts. In the tiny town of Dearborn -- population, 496 -- their identity didn't stay secret for long. 

“Word spread that he won so fast,’’ Troutman said. “I heard that it was a winner from Dearborn, and by the time I walked in the door my mom was on the phone, and she said, ‘He won. It was him.’ Who knows what the impact will be on Dearborn.’’

Jason, one of Cindy and Mark's sons, said Friday, "I hope we stay grounded. I hope we stay the same great people we were yesterday and the day before."

Dozens of others become instant millionaires too

Dearborn is about 35 miles north of Kansas City, the home of the Royals baseball team. While some speculated that the winning numbers -- 5, 23, 16, 22, 29 and Powerball 6 -- were based on Kansas City Royal greats' jersey numbers, the Hills said on Friday that they had done the computerized random quick-pick.

All but five states -- Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota and Ohio -- require the lottery to release the winning names to anyone who asks, according to the Powerball site.  

No one has come forward yet to claim the winning ticket in Arizona, but on Thursday, a mystery man showed up at a gas station in Upper Marlboro, Md., claiming to hold the big winner.

Surveillance video showed a man in a yellow construction suit slowly amble up to the counter, where he pulled out some lottery tickets. After confirming that the numbers on one of the tickets matched, he can be seen in the video repeatedly pumping his fists. It’s unclear what the man was doing in Maryland with a ticket ostensibly from Arizona.

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One of the posters created for the anti-Islam conference in Dearborn, Mich. that uses the name of a young woman murdered last year. Organizers say her murder was an honor killing; her family says her tragic death has nothing to do with their religion.

In Dearborn Mich., a Detroit suburb known for its concentration of Muslim Americans, anti-Islam leaders from around the country are gathering to discuss how to rescue women from that faith. The "Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings" on Sunday is named for a local Muslim woman murdered one year ago.

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But Muslims, civil rights groups and other religious leaders say the conference is merely another event put on by well-known bigots to attack the minority religion. Their response was to schedule a town hall meeting just a few miles away on Sunday called "Rejecting Islamophobia: A Community Stand Against Hate."

The honor killing conference, organized by Pamela Geller, who became nationally famous for her vocal opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque, aka Park 51 in Manhattan, is based on the premise that Mokdad, 20 years old when she died in April 2011, was the victim of an honor killing justified by Islam.

Mokdad’s family maintains that the killing was a tragedy that has nothing to do with their Islamic beliefs, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.

Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images file

Pam Geller a well-known critic of Islam, delivers a speech during a "9-11 Freedom Rally" on Sept. 11, 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks on the United States. Geller founded a group called "Stop the Islamization of America," considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"It's not a case based on honor," Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Bill Cataldo, chief of homicide, told the Free Press on Friday.

In court, prosecutors have said the motive for Mokdad’s killing was that her stepfather, Rahim Alfetlawi had "been sexually abusing her," Cataldo said, according to the report. They argue that when she threatened to go public about the abuse he killed her.

Cataldo said the family strongly objects to the conference using Mokdad’s killing, which they say was a tragedy that had nothing to do with their faith.

Geller insists this was an honor killing carried out by a devout Muslim because his stepdaughter was not following Islam, and that the family is covering it up. She alleges that law enforcers systematically cover up honor killings here and elsewhere under "stealth enforcement" of Islamic shariah law.

On her web site, Geller says: "Despite pressure from the media and members of Jessica's family who want to cover up the honor killing aspect of her murder, we are not going to change the name of the conference. Unlike those closest to her, we are going to honor Jessica's memory and stand up against the brutal practice that took her life."

The Dearborn conference will feature speeches by Geller and Robert Spencer — author of the blog "Jihad Watch" — as well as several like-minded legal and religious figures. They have also invited a young man who says he was Mokdad’s friend to offer "firsthand testimony" that she was a victim of honor killing.

Stop the Islamization of America, which Geller and Spencer founded, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights watchdog.

"Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead," according to a profile published by SPLC on its web site. "She's relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims."

The Arab American Institute, a decades-old community organization in the Detroit area, discouraged Muslims and their supporters from protesting at the site of Geller's conference.  But they organized a competing event, said AAI president Jim Zogby, because Geller and Spencer have become too prominent to ignore.

"Geller and Spencer have thousands of followers, and are given airtime to spew their hate on major American news networks, as if they are respected analysts with just another viewpoint," Zogby said on the AAI announcement for the "Rejecting Islamophobia" town hall in Detroit.

Although many Americans have never encountered a Muslim in person, about 43 percent questioned in a recent Gallup Poll said they felt at least “a little” prejudice against Muslims.

"This group, we cannot ignore. This is the time for our community to take a stand, along with all those who value America’s commitment to diversity and freedom of religion, against the politics of division and bigotry promoted by the Islamophobes."

A variety of community, interfaith and religious leaders and Michigan public on their agenda, for a "community conversation about how to respond to these continued attacks," said Zogby.

One participant who was just on his way to the town hall was Dawud Walid, who heads the Michigan office of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a civil rights advocacy group for Muslims.

"I think firstly we have to better expose who these anti-Muslim bigots are as well as their funders," said Walid. "We believe that the Islamophobia that permeates our country is being pushed by a well-organized, highly-funded network."

He says that while Dearborn and Detroit have become a focus for the activities of Geller and others of like mind, the problem is bigger.

"Islamophobia is a national illness," he said.

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