Big luck times three in southwest NC

If you’ve been reading winner stories here in the Lucke-Zone, then you know it’s always interesting to find out where good luck shows up for North Carolina players. Well, this week, the biggest prizes went to players from Concord, Hickory and Newton.

You could call it ‘the prize of a lifetime.’ A retired furniture store owner from Hickory said he’ll use his $50,000 a year for life prize to help support an orphanage in the Philippines. Luther Pinkerton won the prize instantly playing the $200,000 a Year for Life game.

The first of two Cash 5 jackpots awarded this week went to William Luke Parker, a resident of Concord. When he came to lottery HQ to claim his winnings, he told us he’d been playing the same set of Cash 5 numbers for three years. He matched all five numbers on Dec. 1st to win the $143,933 jackpot.

The other Cash 5 jackpot winner to claim this week is Rodney Rhoades, a contractor from Newton. He won $265,968 in the Dec. 7 draw. “I only play Cash 5 when it gets to be over a hundred thousand,” he said. “I knew I had won but didn’t know how much until they scanned it. Felt pretty good.”

So who else won big? Let’s take a look at more of this week’s biggest instant winners.

A player from Whitakers struck ‘Carolina Gold’ with his $10,000 win. A ‘Pure Gold’ win of $24,000 went to a Burlington resident. A Rocky Mount player saw ‘Cash Fireworks’ after scratching off $25,000 on the game of that name. A pair of $30,000 instant wins went to players from Wade and Jacksonville, who won on the Candy Cane Crossword and Blackout Bingo games, respectively. A player from Hamlet won $50,000 playing Red Hot Millions. And a prize of $70,000 belongs to a Sanford man who played Sapphire Blue 7s. In all, instant ticket prizes to players totaled more than $12.8 million since last week’s update.

Moving on to Powerball, prizes of $10,000 each went to players from Apex, Fayetteville, Greensboro and Salisbury. A pair of $20,000 prizes went to lucky folks living in Leland and Granite Falls. We don’t know who won a $30,000 Powerball prize for the Dec. 3 drawing; that ticket was sold at Happy Day Grocery in Hildebran.

Another mystery we’d like to see solved is who bought the Mega Millions ticket worth $10,000 for the Nov. 29 drawing. It was sold at the Shop N Go in Washington. On that note, the Mega Millions jackpot for the Friday, Dec. 9 drawing is estimated at $100 million.

We can wrap up the rewind by taking a look at North Carolina’s draw game prize totals. Pick 3 players matched their way to more than $1.8 million as Pick 4 players’ winnings topped $1 million. Cash 5 players won more than half a million.

That’s it for this week. Until next time, have a great weekend, and best of luck North Carolina.