On Tuesday, Jerry Hicks, a master carpenter from Banner Elk, North Carolina, visited a Speedway convenience store in Boone, unaware that the gods of fortune were smiling upon him.
He randomly discovered a $20 bill in the parking lot of the convenience store and decided to use it to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket.
To his surprise, the $25 ticket brought him a whopping $1 million prize.
“They Actually Didn’t Have the Ticket I Was Looking For”
Hicks chose an Extreme Cash scratch-off ticket as the store he had entered didn’t have the ticket he initially wanted.
“They actually didn’t have the ticket I was looking for so I bought that one instead,” he remarked.
The small hiccup had the best turnaround for the lotto player, as he scratched off the ticket and was flabbergasted to learn that he had won.
The odds of winning the top prize are 1 in 2,017,650, whereas the overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 4.21, according to official information from the lottery.
He Opted for the Lump Sum
The lucky man claimed his prize on Friday at the North Carolina Education Lottery Headquarters, opting for a lump sum payment of $600,000 instead of an annuity spread over 20 years.
After taxes, his take-home amount was $429,007, according to the lottery.
Hicks, a master carpenter with an impressive 56-year-long career, has a couple of things in mind after Lady Luck’s visit: to retire and to use the money to help his children.
However, before putting any big plans into action, the winner first plans to celebrate his victory together with his family.
“We are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got,” he told lottery officials.
Extreme Cash scratch-off tickets can be purchased in person at convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, and some airport terminals.
Earlier in the month, we reported on the extremely fortunate player from Davidson County who won $4 million from the North Carolina Lottery’s Supreme 7s scratch-off game.
In September, an incredibly lucky player from Oxford, NC who had previously won a jackpot of roughly $500,000 in July, hit another jackpot of $161,534.
Last week, a Floyd resident won a hefty $100,000 prize from one of the Virginia Lottery’s scratch-off games. Another man from the same town in Virginia scooped up a $245,000 win from a Cash 5 game.