NC woman cashes in on her $50 lottery prize — and buys a ticket worth much more
A woman won $50 in the North Carolina lottery — and it was just the start to her lucky streak.
Ashley Tinnin was claiming her prize money over the holiday weekend when she decided to play the Mega Bucks scratch-off game again, the N.C. Education Lottery said Monday in a news release.
It turns out, one of the new lottery tickets she bought was worth much more than her initial prize, the release said.
“I thought I just won $1,000, because I scratched it from the end and I didn’t see it,” Tinnin told lottery officials. “As I got the end of it, it was $200,000, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.”
Tinnin told the lottery her big win on Independence Day was “a whole lot better” than fireworks.
Her good fortune started when she picked up five Mega Bucks tickets on Friday, officials say. She won $50 from them and went to Winners Food Mart in Roxboro the next day, the news release said.
“I sent my boyfriend in to cash it in, but he was taking so long in the store,” Tinnin said in the release.
That’s when she went inside the store, where she decided to try her luck again and snagged the winning scratch-off ticket, according to the N.C. Education Lottery.
“I just felt like it was meant to be and it was a blessing to me and my family,” Tinnin told the lottery.
Tinnin, who works as a sterilization technician at a hospital, gets to take home $141,501 after taxes.
She plans to put the money toward a car and house — but her daughter has a different idea.
After finding out her mom had won, “her thing was, ‘Now I can get a dog,’” Tinnin said in the news release.
Roxboro is roughly 30 miles north of Durham.
This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 10:03 AM.
