Lottery player put ticket to the side. He ‘freaked out’ after he returned to check it

A Michigan man is envisioning a more comfortable retirement after winning the jackpot in a lottery game.

He can thank his wife’s winnings from her birthday lottery tickets for the life-changing prize.

“We don’t play the lottery all that often, but my wife had gotten some tickets for her birthday earlier in the month,” Gary Halama told lottery officials. “When we cashed them in, I saw how high the Fantasy 5 jackpot was, so we decided to use some of the winnings to buy five easy picks.”

Fantasy 5 costs $1 to play, and the daily jackpot starts at $100,000.

But Halama, a 73-year-old from Wayne County, didn’t have high hopes he’d be the winner.

“We got home and had some family over, so we put the ticket aside. Later that night, we were looking at the numbers and thought they were all pretty high so we figured no one would win,” Halama said. “When we checked our ticket and saw all five numbers, we freaked out! It was so hard to believe we had really won this huge jackpot!”

He matched all five numbers — 21-23-25-34-38 — in the July 21 drawing to split the $577,806 winnings with another player. Odds of winning the jackpot were 1-in-575,757.

Halama recently accepted his $288,903 check.

“Winning and having extra in our retirement account certainly does put our minds at ease and lets us enjoy retirement more,” he said.

This story was originally published August 2, 2023 at 5:40 AM with the headline "Lottery player put ticket to the side. He ‘freaked out’ after he returned to check it."