A trip down to North Carolina to help a friend move led Terrance Pertillar of Riverhead, N.Y., to the first $200,000 top prize in a new scratch-off game featuring country music star and North Carolina native Luke Combs.
“This is a once-in-a-blue-moon thing,” Pertillar said.
Pertillar said that, while helping his friend relocate to Henderson, they stopped to get fuel and he noticed a Luke Combs scratch-off ticket in the store.
“I’m a fan of Luke Combs,” Pertillar said. “I saw his ticket so I bought it.”
He purchased his $5 Living Lucky with Luke Combs ticket on Friday from the Granville Food Mart on N.C. 158 in Oxford.
“I was like, ‘Wow, is this real?’” he recalled.
Pertillar collected his prize at lottery headquarters Monday and, after required state and federal tax withholdings, took home $142,501.
Living Lucky with Luke Combs debuted this month with five $200,000 prizes. Four $200,000 prizes remain to be claimed.
Players can enter their Living Lucky with Luke Combs scratch-offs into two second-chance drawings for a chance to attend a private concert in Nashville that includes a chance to win a $500,000 grand prize on stage with Luke Combs.
Ticket sales from scratch-off games make it possible for the lottery to raise $2.5 million a day on average for education. For details on how all 100 counties in North Carolina benefited from lottery funds last year, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.