Powerball winner excitedly told her family she’d won $20,000… then they looked closer at her ticket
You have to be very lucky to win $20,000 on Powerball.
So when one woman thought she’d scooped the five-figure sum after particularly bad luck, she was naturally elated.
But when the overjoyed woman showed the card to her family, they told her earth-shattering news.
A woman who used her lucky lottery numbers for what she said was the last time during Thursday’s Powerball drawing that she thought she had won $20,000 and was elated – but she had actually won $20 million (Stock image)
She hadn’t won $20,000 at all – in fact, she’d won $20 million with her seven numbers and Powerball combination as the sole winner of Division One.
“I looked at it and then ran to my family and said, ‘I won $20,000!'” the woman from Gladstone, New South Wales, told The Lott officials.
“They looked at it and then looked at me and said, ‘No, you haven’t. You won $20 million!’
The woman said she would have been happy if she had won a $20,000 prize, but now finds herself “in fairyland” because of the life-changing win.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and be back to reality.”
She burst into tears when asked what she would do with the huge prize. She told lottery officials that she had been waiting for “one of (their) calls” for years.
She plans to buy a house and travel the world with her winnings.
The woman had been using the same lottery numbers for years and was about to give up those numbers before winning the jackpot.
“I thought, ‘I think I’ll keep it for another week.’ Maybe I’ll be lucky,” she said.
“There’s a few birthdays in there, but it’s the exact same numbers that I’ve been playing over and over again for a long time.
‘I’ve been putting them in every week, but recently I thought I might get rid of them altogether.’
When she checked her ticket on Friday morning, the woman got the shock of her life when she realized it contained the winning numbers. Stock image
Luckily for her, she stuck with the numbers one last time.
‘I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and be back to reality. “I just go with it,” she said.
The unnamed woman bought her winning ticket at Gladstone Newsagency & General Store, whose owners were happy to have cashed out their first multimillion-dollar entry.
Owners Kevin and Robyn McNaught said they were “cheerful” and “excited to know we played a part in changing someone’s life.”