RALEIGH – Less than three weeks after the Powerball jackpot was won by a lottery player from Shallotte, the small coastal town in Brunswick County has another big lottery winner. Darlene Anuszewski matched all her numbers in Sunday night’s All or Nothing drawing to win the $250,000 top prize.
“It’s just exciting,” she said Tuesday afternoon at lottery headquarters. “I never thought it would happen. But it did.”
About 30 minutes after the drawing, Anuszewski and her husband were watching television when Darlene checked her numbers on the lottery’s website. To win All or Nothing’s top prize, a ticket has to beat combined odds of 1 in 1.35 million to match either all or none of the 12 numbers drawn. Anuszewski’s Quick Pick ticket did exactly that, matching them all to win $250,000.
“I started reading the numbers across and said ‘OK, OK, OK, OK,’” she recalled saying as her numbers kept matching. “Then the next line, ‘Oh my, oh goodness, really? Geez, we just won $250,000!’”
The Anuszewskis, who are retired, saw a story on WECT’s Monday evening news that someone had stopped at the Lowes Foods on Beach Drive in Ocean Isle Beach and bought a lottery ticket worth $250,000.
“We just sat there and said ‘That’s us!’” she recalled.
The $173,130 in prize money, Anuszewski said, comes at a good time. The couple had already consulted with an accountant before claiming their winnings.
“We’ll be able to pay all our bills, pay the house off and pay the car off,” she said. “Then we can be easy.”
Ticket sales made it possible for the lottery to raise more than half a billion for the state last year. For details on how more than $28 million in lottery funds have made a difference for specific education programs in Brunswick County, click on the “Where the Money Goes” tab on the lottery’s website.