If Thursday had been a typical morning for Charles Browne of Hendersonville, he would not have ended up on a 500-mile round trip to Raleigh to collect a $1 million lottery prize.
Browne typically begins his day with a stop at Norm’s Minit Mart on Kanuga Road in Hendersonville where he gets a Red Bull and his favorite lottery ticket.
“I will usually play Extreme Cash,” Browne said. “They were out of it so I said let’s go with my second favorite game and that’s how I ended up with the $1 million ticket.”
He said he scratched the $30 Millionaire Maker ticket in the store’s parking lot and “freaked out for a while” when he saw his big win.
Browne had the option of taking the $1 million as an annuity of $50,000 a year over 20 years, or a lump sum of $600,000. He chose the lump sum of $600,000 and took home $424,509 after required federal and state tax withholdings.
He said he plans to pay off bills, but hasn’t decided how to use the rest of his prize money.
“I’m just going to put it in savings for a while,” he said, “let myself realize I have this at my disposal, and make a logical and reasonable decision later on how best to use it.”
Millionaire Maker is the Education Lottery’s first scratch-off to offer 30 $1 million prizes. Browne became the 13th person to win one of those $1 million prizes. Seventeen $1 million prizes remain to be won.
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