Mom hid winning NC lottery ticket so well, it almost expired before she could find it

Every lottery winner’s worst nightmare — misplacing a winning ticket — happened five months ago to Ana Maya of Graham, North Carolina.

The Cash 5 ticket was worth $532,234, and it vanished in September while she was packing boxes to move into a new home, according to a release from the N.C. Education Lottery.

Winners have 180 days to claim their prizes — about six months — so Maya had only about three weeks left when it turned up days ago in the most obscure of hiding spots: between the pages of an old high school notebook.

“I was very, very relieved when I finally found it. That was the last place I would have looked,” Maya, 32, said in the release.

“These last couple of months have been very stressful trying to find it. I totally forgot where I put it.”

The rediscovery was made Tuesday, Feb. 15, and Maya drove to the lottery headquarters in Raleigh the next day to cash it in.

Her winnings came to $346,005 after federal and state withholdings were taken out, officials said.

The ticket had been purchased Sept. 6 at Huff’s Interstate convenience store in Burlington, and lottery officials noted it was set to expire March 6. Money left unclaimed by winners is forfeited ”back into the game,” McClatchy News reports.

Odds of hitting the jackpot in Carolina Cash 5 are about 1 in 962,598, according to the lottery website.

Maya, who is a “customer service worker,” gave lottery officials a list of plans for her money, including paying bills, investing, taking a vacation and setting some aside for her two small children.

This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Mom hid winning NC lottery ticket so well, it almost expired before she could find it."