Mom’s bad day turns around with big SC lottery win. Then she helps her children
A lottery player was having a lousy day at work — then her luck took a turn for the better.
The South Carolina mother learned she won a $375,000 prize, leaving her in disbelief.
“This can’t be right,” the jackpot winner thought, according to the S.C. Education Lottery.
But her win was the real deal, and she has since given some of the prize money to her children, lottery officials wrote June 27 in a news release.
The woman hit the jackpot after a trip to a Shell gas station in Ridgeland, a roughly 30-mile drive northwest from the popular travel destination of Hilton Head Island. While there, she spent $10 on a scratch-off ticket for Mighty Jumbo Bucks, her favorite game.
The woman then went to a “quiet spot” to check the ticket. It revealed she won a $75,000 prize multiplied by five, so she “did the math in her head over and over again” to make sure her calculations were right, officials said.
“My bad day turned out well,” said the winner, who beat 1-in-960,000 odds to score one of the game’s top prizes.
The woman — who wasn’t identified publicly — kept $260,625 after taxes, a lottery spokesperson told McClatchy News via email. In addition to helping her children, she donated some of her winnings to a food bank.
It’s not the first time a lottery player’s bad day has ended with a big win. In Missouri, a man’s luck changed when he realized his ticket was worth $100,000, McClatchy News reported in May.
This story was originally published June 30, 2025 at 11:29 AM.
