Most bowlers hope to walk away with a few strikes, but a Missouri Lottery player won a much bigger prize when she purchased a “$5,000,000 Fortune” Scratchers ticket at Hamilton Bowl, 601 S. Hughes St., in Hamilton.
"When I was packing up my bowling stuff, I remembered I had some winning tickets in my purse, so I thought I’d use them to go buy a ticket,” the winner explained.
She walked up to the bowling counter and picked out the “$5,000,000 Fortune” ticket after talking with the clerk.
“I hadn’t ever played a $50 ticket before,” she said. “And then I was just like, ‘I’ll take it.’”
She took the ticket home and scratched if off later that night.
“The very first number I scratched was 63 and right under that was $50,000!” she recounted.
Her husband was in the shower at the time, but it didn’t stop her from rushing in to tell him the good news.
“I burst in there and I was like I won $50,000!” she said. “And he was like, ‘No way!’”
Even after they’d had a chance to regroup and both look at the ticket, it was still hard to believe.
“All night long I’m thinking that this isn’t real,” she said. “It wasn’t until I took it back to the bowling alley the next day and scanned it that I thought, ‘This is real.’”
“$5,000,000 Fortune” players have won over $110 million in prizes playing the $50 game. Over $142.5 million remain in unclaimed prizes, including a top prize of $5 million, three prizes of $1 million and 21 additional $50,000 prizes.
Players who purchased tickets in Caldwell County last fiscal year won more than $1 million in total Missouri Lottery prizes. Retailers received more than $101,000 in commissions and bonuses, and education programs in the county received more than $693,000 in appropriated Lottery proceeds.
