June 25 (UPI) — A North Carolina woman said she wouldn’t have won her $200,000 lottery jackpot if her local store hadn’t been sold out of her favorite scratch-off ticket.
Joanne Pacheco, of Durham, told North Carolina Education Lottery officials she was at the Lakeland Street Mini Mart in Durham when she found out the store was sold out of the scratch-off game she wanted.
“They didn’t have my tickets,” Pacheco recalled. “So, I said, ‘Just give me four of those.'”
Pacheco took her stack of scratch-off tickets, the recently launched 7 game, home and discovered one was a $200,000 winner.
“I was sitting on my bed, thinking I can’t believe this is real,” Pacheco said.
The winner said the money will come as a big help after she recently moved to North Carolina from New Hampshire to be closer to her son.
“I’m gonna live happily for the rest of my life,” she said. “That’s all that matters to me.”