‘At least I got my money back’ — but NC lottery player wasn’t done scratching ticket
A man thought he got back what he paid for his North Carolina lottery ticket — but he hadn’t finished scratching it yet.
It turns out, there were enough matching symbols on the ticket to make it worth a lot more, $1 million, the N.C. Education Lottery said Wednesday in a news release.
“I’ve always had a dream of winning something like this,” lottery player Roosevelt Howard said in the release. “Knowing that I can buy my wife a new home and just help some family members and some other people in need, thank the Lord.”
Officials say Howard’s good fortune started when he went to Circle K, a convenience store on South Saunders Street near downtown Raleigh. That’s where he decided to try his luck on some lottery tickets, including one for the Red Hot Riches game, according to the news release.
“I usually don’t buy this ticket that often,” Howard said in the release. “But Saturday evening I said I’d get one and it just happened to be the right one.”
And Howard would soon find out why. The next day, he started scratching the lucky ticket to reveal a few flame symbols, each one indicating how much he had won, the N.C. Education Lottery says.
“I saw three to start with and said, ‘Well at least I got my money back,’” Howard told the lottery.
But he wasn’t done scratching off the ticket.
“I kept going and kept seeing more little symbols, and when I got to ten of them, I hadn’t even looked at the ledger to see what ten of them amounted to for the prize,” Howard told officials. “I counted them again to make sure I had won $1 million.”
He decided to take his prize money in a lump sum and got to keep $424,503 after taxes, according to the lottery.
After claiming his prize, officials say Howard, who has worked as a forklift driver for more than 40 years, doesn’t plan to miss a beat.
“I could retire if I wanted to but I’m going to keep working because I enjoy what I’m doing,” he told the lottery.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 9:15 AM with the headline "‘At least I got my money back’ — but NC lottery player wasn’t done scratching ticket."
