Store worker buys lottery ticket on day off. It left ‘a whole bunch of people crying’
A North Carolina worker bought a lottery ticket on her day off — and the prize left her in tears, officials said.
“It was just a whole bunch of people crying out of excitement,” Kimberly Coleman said, recalling the moment she told her family she hit the jackpot.
Now, Coleman has big plans to help her relatives, the N.C. Education Lottery wrote in a July 12 news release.
“One of my dreams is to save the money to buy a house in the future where my mom could live with me,” Coleman, who is from Waynesville, told lottery officials. “I want a house where I can help take care of her later on.”
Officials said Coleman scored a six-figure prize after stopping at a familiar spot. On a day when she wasn’t on the clock, she went to her workplace and spent $5 on a lottery ticket for the Carolina Jackpot game.
The scratch-off ticket — purchased at a Quick Pantry gas station store in Waynesville — was worth $200,000. Coleman couldn’t contain her emotions.
“I kind of acted like a fool a little bit jumping up and down,” she told lottery officials.
And when she told her family about her winning ticket, the tears started to flow.
“I brought it home and showed my mom and she started to cry,” Coleman said in the release. “I cried too.
Coleman kept $142,501 after taxes. In addition to helping her mother with a home, she said she hopes to share her prize money with relatives.
“My mom is my world so to be able to help her makes me really happy,” Coleman told the N.C. Education Lottery.
Waynesville is in Haywood County, roughly 30 miles southwest of the popular mountain town of Asheville.
It’s not the first time someone bought a lucky lottery ticket at their workplace. Last year, officials said another North Carolina woman got richer after playing the lottery while she wasn’t on duty.
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If you or a loved one shows signs of gambling addiction, you can seek help by calling the national gambling hotline at 1-800-522-4700 or visiting the National Council on Problem Gambling website.
This story was originally published July 13, 2023 at 8:02 AM with the headline "Store worker buys lottery ticket on day off. It left ‘a whole bunch of people crying’."
