Charlotte woman hits $1M jackpot with lottery ticket she put aside in disbelief
A Charlotte woman thought she was seeing things when she scratched off part of a lottery ticket in her car and it showed she’d won a million bucks, North Carolina lottery officials said Thursday.
Connie Lockhart told lottery officials that she paused and then laid the $10 Power 10s ticket aside to scratch off the other two tickets she’d bought at Den’s Mart on The Plaza in Charlotte, according to a lottery news release.
“I just put it to the side because I’m like, ‘Mmm, let me make sure I’m looking at it right,” Lockhart told lottery officials after she claimed her prize at lottery headquarters in Raleigh on Wednesday.
When she picked the Power 10s ticket back up, she said, “I scratched it some more to make sure I’m reading $1 MIL and then I was just shaking.”
Lockhart, who works as a receiving clerk, had scored a $1 million top prize in the Power 10s game, lottery officials said.
She beat odds of 1 in 3.57 million, according to the lottery website.
Lockhart had the choice of taking the $1 million as an annuity of 20 payments of $50,000 a year or a $600,000 lump sum, lottery officials said. She chose the lump sum, taking home $424,503 after taxes, according to the lottery.
She intends to pay her bills off and help her daughter pay off a loan. She’ll take a vacation “when we can” and build a deck on her house, she said.
Several other Charlotte-area residents won lottery jackpots recently:
MegaMillions winner
Marion Hughes of Mooresville scored a $1 million Mega Millions win with a $2 ticket she bought at Fast Phil’s convenience store on Brawley School Road in southern Iredell County, lottery officials said.
Her ticket matched the numbers on all five white balls, 15-19-33-39-68, in Tuesday night’s drawing, according to the lottery.
Hughes, who claimed her prize on Wednesday, beat odds of 1 in 12.6 million, officials said.
$4 million winner
Fast Phil’s is about 4 miles from a Food Lion on River Highway (N.C. 150) in Mooresville where Kenneth Stewart landed a $4 million jackpot with a $20 scratch-off ticket in the Ruby Red 7s game
Stewart claimed the prize on Dec. 1, beating odds of about 1 in 3 million, according to the lottery.
Because Stewart won the last of the four top $4 million prizes, lottery officials said they’ve now begun to wind down the game that debuted in January.
Family splits $1 million win
And in neighboring Cabarrus County, a Concord woman and three family members scored a $1 million lottery prize after they chipped in 50 cents each for a Mega Millions ticket around Thanksgiving, lottery officials and the woman’s mother said Tuesday.
Lorraine Dowe bought the winning ticket at Carolina Fast Mart on U.S. 601 in Concord with Troy Dowe of Middletown, N.Y., Nicollette Rhodes of Linden, N.J., and Chad Payne of New York, according to a lottery news release.
The numbers on the $2 ticket matched all five white balls, 4-10-27-35-58, in the Nov. 27 drawing, the release said.
They beat odds of 1 in 12.6 million, lottery officials said.