We begin this week’s big winner rewind by fast forwarding to three big jackpots on big rolls. The Carolina Cash 5 jackpot, estimated at $403,000 for Friday’s drawing, has been rolling for over a week. The Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots have rolled four times apiece to estimated jackpot annuities of $40 million and $60 million respectively.
The three luckiest lottery players in North Carolina this week won $100,000 each. James Cherry, who lives in Hope Mills in Cumberland County, collected the $103,627 Cash 5 jackpot he won in the November 10 drawing. “It was just lucky,” he said at headquarters on Monday. “I’m thrilled.”
Some ‘good fortune’ led to a $100,000 prize for a construction worker from Sneads Ferry in Onslow County. Erick Lopez scratched off the top prize playing the lottery’s Wheel of Fortune game. “This feels good,” Lopez said as he held his check for the first time. “It’s starting to sink in now.”
Our third $100,000 winner this week, Emma Garrett of Raleigh, described her winning moment this way: “I saw the one and the zero and thought I’d won ten dollars,” Garrett said. “Then I saw those zeroes. I just kept counting them over and over. It’s unbelievable.” Garret won playing a 10X the Money instant ticket.
Looking at North Carolina’s draw games over the last week, Pick 3 players wrangled more than $2.7 million, Pick 4 players corralled more than $904,000 and Cash 5 players roped in more than $398,000. Sorry, “roped in” was kind of a stretch but we were running low on ranching metaphors.
What we’re not running low on this week are big-winning Powerball and Mega Millions tickets. Wins of $10,000 went to players from Burlington and Charlotte. We don’t know who bought four other lucky tickets for drawings held over the past week: a $10,000 Powerball ticket was sold in Statesville while one worth $200,000 was sold in Benson. Someone bought a third Powerball ticket, this one worth $20,000, in Franklin. A Mega Millions ticket worth $40,000 for Tuesday’s drawing was sold in Kings Mountain.
Two of the seven instant prizes of $10,000 awarded this week went to Wilson players. The other five were won by residents of Durham, Graham, Hendersonville, Holly Springs and Norlina. A Carolina Gold player from Charlotte and a $150 Grand player from Rocky Mount each scratched off $20,000 prizes. And a Carolina Beach woman had a ‘spectacular’ day at the beach, winning $50,000 playing Cash Spectacular. In all, North Carolina players won more than $12.6 million on instant tickets since last week’s wrap-up.
So that about does it from lottery headquarters this week. We love meeting winners and sharing their stories with you. Until next time, we hope you have a wonderful weekend and wish you the best of luck.
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how about just making 2 numbers matched on the cash 5 a automatic ticket and any changes coming to the cash 5 it be better if it started at 100,000 with the powerball going up to 2 dollars people will play the state game more i think if starting jackpot was higher.