Barbara Shields of Jacksonville said she can plan for her kids’ futures with a $1 million lottery win.

“I’ve got three teens,” Shields said. “This is really big, it’s going to help us pay for college.”

Shields was returning home from Winston-Salem when she stopped at the Food Lion on Western Boulevard in Jacksonville. She recently won $2,500 with the $2,500 Frenzy, and she wanted to try her luck again. The store was out of the Frenzy ticket, so she decided to buy a different $10 ticket. After getting $1,000,000 Taxes Paid, Shields immediately scanned the barcode to find out if it was a winner and a message showed up on the screen.

“‘What? That didn’t say regional,’” she thought. “‘It said to go to headquarters.’ I figured I’d better scratch it and see what I won.”

The scratched-off ticket revealed a $1 million prize.

“I’ve never seen that many zeros,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘Is that for real? Is that for real?’”

A player who wins a top prize in this game gets a check for the top prize amount with the taxes already paid. The lottery pays the minimum mandatory required federal and state tax withholding as part of the top prizes awarded in the game. The actual top prize Shields claimed on Wednesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh was $1,438,829. After required state and federal withholdings, she took home $1,000,003.

The game launched in April with four top prizes of $1,438,829. Two top prizes remain.

Ticket sales from instant games like $1,000,000 Taxes Paid make it possible for the lottery to raise more than half a billion dollars a year for education. For details on how lottery funds have made a difference in Onslow County, click on the “For Education” section of the lottery’s website.