Life can get pretty busy sometimes, creating situations that may distract you from previously-set plans. While this normally wouldn't be that big of a deal if it wasn't a life-altering derailment, one woman in North Carolina went a couple of months with a lucky lottery ticket sitting in her car before she remembered to check it and ultimately discovered she won over half a million dollars.
Tina Edwards, of Greensboro, purchased a few lottery tickets from the Bestway on Walker Avenue in September, including a Cash 5 ticket that later proved to be a winner, according to a release from the NC Education Lottery. On Tuesday (November 1), she and a co-worker stopped by another gas station to check the tickets that had been sitting in her car for weeks and found out that she hit the $653,599 jackpot.
"We were in the store and she said, 'Oh! You won something,'" she said. "I've been in complete shock for the last two days."
Edwards' lucky ticket matched all five white balls in the September 28 drawing to score the jackpot.
"I didn't know I won," she said. "I was riding around with it for two months with no idea I had a winning ticket."
Edwards claimed her prize at lottery headquarters on Thursday (November 3), over a month after originally winning the prize. The lucky winner took home a grand total of $464,121 after all required state and federal tax withholdings. When asked what she plans to do with her new winnings, she told lottery officials she plans to pay off her house and take a overseas trip to Dubai with her family.