Lottery winner stays true to three-month "alarm" ritual
By Kate Northrop
ROCK HILL, Mo. — A Missouri man didn't know he was holding onto a winning Powerball lottery ticket worth $1 million for three months.
Thanks to a ticket-checking ritual that required an alarm, three months went by before an anonymous lottery winner from Missouri found out he was sitting on a $1 million winning Powerball ticket.
A Missouri resident entered the Powerball drawing that took place on Jan. 2, 2023, having bought his winning ticket at an On the Run convenience store on Manchester Road in Rock Hill.
While many players either wait up at night for the live drawing to occur or wait until the next morning to see the results, he follows a much longer cadence for checking tickets.
"I have an alarm set for me to check my tickets every three months," the winner told the Missouri Lottery. "So I didn't know for a while."
Lottery winners in Missouri have 180 days from the draw date to claim their prize. When his three-month alarm went off in March, he sat down to check his tickets.
"I looked at it, and I'd won $1 million!" he recalled. "I told my wife, and she thought it was a joke."
His ticket matched the five white ball numbers, 7, 9, 12, 31, and 62, just missing the Powerball 22 to hit the $274.6 million jackpot. The odds of matching the first five numbers to win the $1 million second-tier Powerball prize are 1 in 11,688,054.
Having claimed his prize at Lottery headquarters in Jefferson City on March 29, the winner said he'll put the money toward retirement and use it to complete projects around the house.
The Powerball jackpot currently stands at $380 million for the drawing on Mon., June 19 at 10:59 pm EST. Tickets cost $2 each.
Powerball lottery results are published within minutes of the drawing at USA Mega (www.usamega.com). The USA Mega Web site provides lottery players in-depth information about the United States' two biggest multi-state lottery games, Mega Millions and Powerball.
Every three months LOL. He buys gobs of tickets every week I bet.
His system worked, congrats and enjoy.
Maybe he travels a lot for work. He had a system and it worked. I think someone buying a ton of tickets would check them every day or so. I bet he is an occasional player.
lucky guy
No, like someone else said, I think he buys a lot of tickets each week, let them accumulate each month until his alarm goes off. I have read countless stories where people buy tons of tickets each week and keep them in the a certain place and then check them all at one time. I remember one story about a 19 year old guy's mom came into his room one day. She asked him to clean up is room, as he was cleaning his room he found a stack of lottery tickets he had thrown in a corner. He checked the tickets and one was a winner of $1 million dollars. He said if it was not for mom, telling him to clean his room, the ticket would have expired, for that he was treating her to a nice vacation.
Yeah I remember that story too:
https://www.lotterypost.com/news/272928
Yes, I also thinks he buys gobs of tickets each week and puts them in a drawer somewhere. Then at the 3 month mark he check all the tickets when his alarm reminds him. All to often people do buy gobs of tickets each week and sometimes forget to check them and a winning ticket will expire.