LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky Lottery said a frequent lottery player has scored a top prize after buying a scratch-off ticket based on his birthday.
Lottery officials said the man, who wanted to remain anonymous, purchased the $5 “777 scratch-off” from a vending machine at the Hillview Kroger on June 7.
He told the lottery that when he got the ticket, he immediately scanned it to see if it was a winner. Once scanned, the man said it was “the one he was searching for.”
“I already knew it was a big one,” he recalled.
The man scratched the ticket and said he only saw a couple of seven symbols on the ticket but the more he worked through it, there were more.
“I got to four and five [seven symbols],” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty real!’ Then the last number in the right corner was a seven.”
The man originally thought his take home prize was $7,777 but realized he had $70,000 more reasons to be excited once he scratched the back of the ticket.
“I really just looked at it and was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” he said. “There was a lady scratching next to me and she said, ‘What?’ And, I said, ‘I don’t know if I should say, but I just won the jackpot on this!’”
He showed the woman the prompt from the machine that read, “See Kentucky Lottery Corporation.”
The man recalled the woman telling him that she should have played on the winning machine.
“Thankfully, you didn’t and thankfully, it was me!” he said.
For three days the man kept his winning ticket in a safe place before going to lottery headquarters to claim his winnings on June 10.
The Kentucky Lottery said the man won the prize on June 7 and his birthday is July 7.
“I always kind of felt partial to the ticket because of that,” he said. “But did I ever in a million years think that I would actually hit one of those jackpots?”
In the end, the man said he is going to use his winnings to pay off his truck and do some home renovations.
“I’m happy to have that worry free feeling again,” he said.
The man walked away with $55,999.44 after taxes and the Kroger store will receive $777.77 for selling the ticket.
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