Sometimes the stars just align. Some folks play the same numbers for years! An important life event lines up with a lottery win or beginner’s luck pulls through. Our lottery winners have some incredible stories to tell about how the stars aligned for them in ways you might not see coming. Check out a few “unusual” wins we’ve seen here at the lottery so far:
The winning numbers of a June 2019 Carolina Pick 4 drawing, 0-0-0-0, are known as “Quads” among players of the Pick 4 game. Quads are some of the most popular combination of numbers played. The odds of matching all four numbers in a Pick 4 drawing add up to 1 in 10,000. For some players, 0-0-0-0 are their go-to numbers. “I love the zeroes!” said Willie Ward. “I’m dedicated to them. I always play them in Pick 3 and Pick 4, so today is my lucky day.” For Stephen Carter, picking 0-0-0-0 was the luck of a single moment. “I’ve never played 0-0-0-0 before,” said Carter. He played 0-0-0-0 on a 50 cent ticket and won $2,500. The drawing produced 2,014 winning tickets and $7.8 million in prizes.
For Lindsay Jackson of Raleigh, a family tradition of getting scratch-off tickets as stocking stuffers turned into a $100,000 gift on Christmas morning 2017. She bought $50 worth of scratch-off tickets, put some in her husband’s and parent’s stockings, and slipped a Mega Bucks ticket in her own. “I was the last one to scratch my ticket,” Jackson said. “I thought I was reading it wrong at first. I kept thinking, ‘This can’t be right, I must be misunderstanding the rules of the game.’” She had her whole family check the ticket just to make sure. “It was an exciting morning,” Jackson said. “It felt fateful to win like that on Christmas.”
For James and Maxine Hilliker of Lumberton, a tradition of playing the lottery together led to a $768,862 Cash 5 jackpot win a week before their 70th wedding anniversary. The Hillikers had a weekly morning routine of playing Cash 5 together. “We go to the same store every Tuesday,” said Maxine. “We always play the same numbers. I’ve been playing them for over 22 years in California, Florida and now North Carolina. We use my birthday, my husband’s birthday, and the birthdays of my three sisters. We’ve never won anything big.” James recalled reading out their winning numbers to his wife and the shocked look on her face. “Then she told me to read those again. So I read them out again.” James said. “I told him that I had them all,” said Maxine. “I had every single number.” The Hillikers received their winning check on James’ 90th birthday.
A first try buying a scratch-off led to a $1 million win for Erika Aparicio, a greenhouse worker from Charlotte. Aparicio said she had played the Mega Millions game once before, but decided to try the lottery’s 50X The Cash game after watching her friends buy scratch-offs. “I couldn’t believe it because it was my first time buying a ticket and scratching it off,” Aparicio said. “It was too much emotion. I still can’t believe it right now.”
William Goins of Southport said he won an October 2019 $323,783 Cash 5 jackpot with the same set of numbers he’s used for 13 years. “They’re my lucky numbers,” Goins said. “They just came to me one day while I was filling out the play slip, and I’ve been using them ever since.” When he won, he said he planned to celebrate by getting a new motor for his fishing boat.
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