At first, Lori Janes wasn’t really enthusiastic about her gift: the office manager of a dental practice from Louisville, Kentucky, literally hit the jackpot at her company Christmas party.
As several US media reports, each of the colleagues should get a gift worth a maximum of 25 dollars for secret Santa. At the Christmas party in the office, they exchanged presents. Janes had actually received a voucher from TJ Maxx, but an employee later snatched it up. As CNN reported, referring to a message from the Kentucky Lottery, the office manager was initially a little disappointed because she shops there more often.
Eventually, she settled on a colleague’s $25 scratch card. When everyone was urging her to scratch them off, she started drawing the first ticket. With that, she won $50. However, the second won her the jackpot: $175,000.
“Everybody went nuts. People pulled out their calculators and double-checked everything. A few people even scanned the ticket with the lottery’s app just to be sure,” Janes is quoted as saying. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a $25 gift swap and I won $175,000!”
That same day, Janes collected her unexpected Christmas prize, which came to $124,250 after taxes. “This is so crazy,” says Janes. “I am truly blessed.”
She wants to use the profits to pay for her daughter’s student loans and her cars. And Jane’s isn’t the only winner: the supermarket where the tickets were sold also gets a $1,750 bonus.
See the video: In the USA, the record jackpot of the Powerball lottery has been cracked. Around two billion US dollars are waiting for the owner of the lottery ticket, which was sold in Joe’s Service Center in Altadena – the winner has not yet been identified.
Sources: CNN, Kentucky Lottery
