Woman thought she won $2 in this popular NC lottery game. It was a whole lot more.
A Charlotte woman thought she won $2 in a popular lottery game, N.C. lottery officials said Friday. Double-checking her numbers the next day, she discovered she’d hit a jackpot.
“When the numbers first came out, I looked and thought, ‘Wow, one person won all that money,” Sylvia Spaulding said when she claimed her $445,289 Cash 5 jackpot at lottery headquarters in Raleigh Thursday.
“Oh well,’’ she told herself before going back to sleep after Monday’s drawing, according to a lottery news release Friday.
She saw a notification in her email that she won a prize, but assumed it was the more common $2 one.
“When I went back and double checked my numbers, that’s when I realized the winner was me,” she said. “I was in shock.”
She beat odds of 1 in 962,598, according to the Cash 5 page on NCLottery.com.
Spaulding bought the $1 Quick Pick ticket through her Online Play account on the lottery website, officials said.
She ran to tell her husband.
“I told him, ‘One person won the whole thing, and I just found out it was me,’” she said. “He just said, ‘Wow.’”
After taxes, Spaulding took home $317,270, according to the lottery.
“I don’t think it has hit me completely just yet,” she said.
She plans to put the money into savings, officials said.
Players can buy tickets for Cash 5 and five other N.C. games at lottery retailers and through Online Play.
