Lottery winner left $500,000 ticket behind at the store
Feb. 21 (UPI) -- An Iowa man said he was so excited to reveal a $500,000 prize from a scratch-off lottery ticket that he accidentally left the ticket behind at the store.
Kevin Frey told Iowa Lottery officials he bought a $500,000 Ca$h scratch-off lottery ticket from the Casey's store on North Linn Avenue in New Hampton and scratched it off inside the store, revealing the $500,000 prize.
Frey handed the ticket over to a store employee to scan and was overcome with excitement when she told him he had indeed won the top prize.
"I was shaking pretty good then, I think," Frey recalled.
He rushed out to the parking lot to call his family.
"I was so excited and flustered that I left the ticket inside of the Casey's store and went out to the car and started calling everybody, calling my wife at first and everybody else," he said.
Frey said he only realized he didn't have the ticket when his adult son asked him to send a photo.
"And then I realized, 'I don't have it! It's in the store,'" Frey said. "Fortunately, I was still in the parking lot of the Casey's store and I ran back inside and asked the employee for the ticket. She was so flustered, she forgot to give it to me the first time. So, we finally got it on the right page."
Frey said his son had good reason to demand photographic proof.
"My kids know that I tell some pretty good tales sometimes," Frey said. "So the oldest son who lives down in Des Moines here said that it's not true until he sees a picture of the ticket. And so we took care of that and he was pretty excited, too."
Frey said the prize money will help with his retirement plans.
"This is going to help a lot. This is exciting in that way, too," he said. "It will be fun to be able to share some of it with some of our family and some of the charities that we support and have supported for a long time."
