Patrick Donahue of Hendersonville couldn’t believe his eyes when the numbers he’d been playing for 15 years matched the numbers to a $631,674 Cash 5 jackpot.
“For 15 years, I’ve been looking at those numbers,” he said. “It’s not something you ever think is really going to happen.”
The night before the Feb. 16 drawing, Donahue purchased his winning ticket, using his own numbers, through Online Play using his NC Lottery Official Mobile App.
“I looked at the lottery app on my phone that next morning and saw the numbers and I was almost in disbelief,” he recalled of learning of his big win. “It took me a minute to really believe it.”
His wife, who was sitting in the same room, saw his reaction.
“She knew the way that I was getting up from the chair and the way that I said, ‘Oh my God,’ that it was something big,” he recalled. “We both hugged each other and just had a day of it.”
Donahue had one of two tickets that split the $631,674 jackpot, winning him $315,837. The second half of the jackpot was won by Charles Sullivan of Raleigh, who also won using a set of his own numbers.
He claimed his prize Monday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh and took home $223,455 after required federal and state tax withholdings.
Donahue and his wife plan to make a few home improvements with the prize money and hope to take a long-awaited trip with the rest.
“Probably next year, whenever the pandemic has gone away, we’ll do some of our traveling that we didn’t get to do this year,” he said.
Carolina Cash 5 tickets are $1 and drawings are held every night. Wednesday’s jackpot is $399,000. The odds of winning a Cash 5 jackpot are 1 in 962,598.
Cash 5 is one of four lottery games in North Carolina where players have the option of buying their tickets through Online Play either through the lottery’s website or with the NC Lottery Official Mobile App.
Login to leave a comment.