March 18 — A Michigan woman was forced to choose a replacement lottery ticket after her local store sold out of the one she wanted to buy — and she won a $1 million prize.
The Kent County resident told Michigan Lottery officials that she went to a local store looking for a specific scratch-off lottery ticket, only to discover that the game was sold out.
“The store didn’t have the game I wanted to buy, so I decided to try my luck on the Wild Cherry game,” the gamer recalled. “I scratched the barcode and scanned the ticket. When I saw the message saying I needed to file a claim, I assumed I had won $10,000.”
The woman claimed that the store clerk helped her realize that her prize was much larger than she had previously thought.
“I gave the ticket back to the clerk and had her check it,” she told me. “She helped me scratch the rest of it off, and when she saw I had hit $1 million, she screamed: ‘She just won $1 million!'”
The winner plans to use her prize money to buy a new home and increase her savings.
“Never knowing when you might find a winning ticket is part of what makes playing instant games fun,” Lottery Commissioner Suzanna Shkreli said. “Winning $1 million, especially on a game you are playing for the first time, is an incredibly exciting way to win!”
