Thirsty NC grandpa hit jackpot on stop for a Coke Zero. ‘My mouth couldn’t speak right.’
A thirsty North Carolina grandpa scored a jackpot on a stop for a Coke Zero, ending a popular scratch-off game, N.C. lottery officials said Tuesday.
Gastonia resident Randy Stroud rarely buys lottery tickets, but something about the $5 Gold Standard ticket called to him, according to a lottery news release.
“I looked at it, and it just said, ‘Pick me,’” Stroud said when he claimed his $200,000 prize at lottery headquarters in Raleigh Monday. “So, I did.”
He beat odds of 1 in 1.358 million, according to the Gold Standard game page on NCLottery.com.
Stroud won the last of six top prizes available in the game, lottery spokesman Jonathan LaRowe told The Charlotte Observer. Games wind down when a player wins the last top prize.
The lottery started the game on March 1, 2022.
Stroud bought the ticket Saturday morning at Lowell Mini Mart on McAdenville Road in Lowell.
“My mouth couldn’t speak right,” Stroud said, referring to when he realized he won. “I could barely talk to the girl in the store.”
When he told the oldest of his three grandsons that he’d won, Stroud got a bear hug and huge grin from the boy, he said.
“’We are blessed, Papa,’” Stroud said his grandson told him.
“Yep, you are right,” he said he replied.
After taxes, Stroud took home $142,501, lottery officials said.
“You always see the big numbers, and you always go, ‘Man, wouldn’t that be nice,’” Stround said. “You think that is never going to happen, but it happened. It just absolutely happened.”
Stroud said he’ll do home repairs and continue restoring a 1972 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the proceeds.