Woman checks item off bucket list with NC lottery prize. ‘Reality still hasn’t hit’

A woman completed a life goal when she won $100,000 in the North Carolina lottery.

“Every time when we drive by the lottery building I would say, ‘We are going to get our picture taken there one day,’” Annette Brown, a seafood restaurant owner, told the North Carolina Education Lottery in a Sept. 16 news release. “It was on my bucket list.”

Brown, 54, who lives in Raleigh, said that before she bought her winning ticket — a $30 “Millionaire Maker” ticket from a Food Lion in nearby Knightdale — she was inspired by a news alert about a man who won $1 million from a ticket purchased at a Food Lion in Charlotte.

Brown said at first, she thought she’d misread the ticket because she’d just gotten new contact lenses.

“I figured I must not be seeing it right,” she told lottery officials. “Reality still hasn’t hit yet.”

She was on the phone with her husband, who was driving his motorcycle, when she scratched off the ticket.

“... I told him, ‘Pull over. Pull over. I think I just won $100,000,’” she said, according to the release.

After state and federal taxes, Brown took home $71,019. She said she planned to do something nice for the staff at her restaurant.