Caregiver scores life-changing Powerball prize in Washington. ‘Good karma’
A caregiver bought three Powerball tickets in Washington but didn’t check them for a few days.
She ended up with a life-changing prize of $50,000.
The woman snagged the lottery tickets for the March 9 drawing while grocery shopping at Fred Meyer in Greenwood, a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington’s Lottery said in an April 8 news release.
She selected Quick Pick, which randomly selects Powerball numbers and stuffed the tickets in her jacket pocket, lottery officials said.
But she didn’t “get around to checking” the tickets until she went grocery shopping again a few days later, the lottery office said.
While at the store, she pulled out her three tickets. It wasn’t until she scanned the second ticket that she realized she had won $50,000.
She was one number short of winning the $511 million jackpot after matching four of the five white balls and the red Powerball, a lottery spokesperson told McClatchy News.
The winning numbers were 30, 36, 49, 52, 63 and a red Powerball 16. She missed the white ball 52.
“She had no inkling that it would bring her unexpected, good karma, ultimately leading to a prize that would significantly change her life,” the lottery office said.
The lucky lottery player told one of her caregiving clients, and she called her mom and sister in Mexico.
Now she has plans to use the prize money to pay off her business, help her family in Mexico and donate some of it to animal organizations.
What to know about Powerball
To score a jackpot in the Powerball, a player must match all five white balls and the red Powerball.
The odds of scoring the jackpot prize are 1 in 292,201,338.
Tickets can be bought on the day of the drawing, but sales times and price vary by state.
Drawings are broadcast Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays at 10:59 p.m. ET and can be streamed online.
Powerball is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
This story was originally published April 8, 2024 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Caregiver scores life-changing Powerball prize in Washington. ‘Good karma’."
