Lottery winner couldn’t stop looking at lucky ticket. ‘Am I seeing this right?’
A lottery player scored a huge prize — and couldn’t keep her eyes off her lucky ticket.
“I was asking myself, ‘Am I seeing this right?’” Prudence Powell, who works in North Carolina and lives in Virginia, told the N.C. Education Lottery.
Powell’s six-figure win was the real deal. Now, she hopes to save for retirement and help with her daughter’s student loans.
“This is life-changing for me,” Powell told lottery officials in a June 11 news release.
Powell got richer after she tried her luck on Red Hot Numbers, a Fast Play jackpot game. She works at Blue Ridge Tobacco & Candle Outlet in Winston-Salem and was on her lunch break when she bought the winning ticket from the store, officials said.
Because Powell spent $5 on her ticket, she won half of the jackpot prize. That means her ticket was worth $155,241, McClatchy News reported.
“I just kept looking at it,” the prize winner said in the release. “It was like it wasn’t registering.”
Powell is from Danville, Virginia, just across the border from North Carolina. She kept $111,387 after taxes.
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 9:29 AM with the headline "Lottery winner couldn’t stop looking at lucky ticket. ‘Am I seeing this right?’."
