RALEIGH – Asheville resident Felicia Gordon plans to use the $150,000 she won playing the 10X the Payout game to purchase a new home. Gordon, a customer service phone representative, was sitting in her car on her lunch break when she scratched off the winning ticket.

“I thought I was looking at it wrong,” Gordon said. “I looked at it a hundred times. It was surreal.”

After taxes were withheld, Gordon received a check for $102,001. She purchased the winning $5 ticket at the Market Center on Hendersonville Road in Asheville.

“This feels great,” Gordon said as she held her check for the first time. “We’re going house shopping this afternoon.”

As of Thursday morning, five more $150,000 top prizes remain to be claimed in the game.

Ticket sales for games such as instant scratch-offs have enabled the lottery to raise more than $2.58 billion for education initiatives statewide. Since the lottery began through June 30, 2012, Buncombe County education programs received more than $40.5 million in lottery funds. By law, those funds pay for teachers’ salaries in grades K-3, school construction, prekindergarten programs for at-risk four-year-olds, and need-based college scholarships and financial aid.