Human Interest
Winner, winner, chicken dinner – literally.
A Virginia man recently went to the grocery store to pick up some chicken – and came back half a million dollars richer.
Russell Gomes, of South Boston, Virginia, went to the Food Lion grocery store recently to buy chicken, he told the Virginia Lottery’s website.
South Boston is located in southern Virginia, about 20 miles north of the North Carolina border.
While he was shopping, he decided to buy a scratch-off ticket – specifically, the Virginia Lottery’s “Magnificent 7s” scratcher.
Gomes, a tractor-trailer driver, went to scratch off his ticket in the store’s parking lot – and got the surprise of a lifetime.
“I really didn’t believe it!” he told Lottery officials when he redeemed his winning ticket on May 3. “It feels great!
Gomes told the Virginia Lottery that he plans on using his winnings to pay off a vacation that he had already scheduled.
Magnificent 7s, the game Gomes played, has prizes ranging from $20 to $500,000, said the Virginia Lottery.
There are two additional $500,000 top prizes that have not been claimed, they said.
The Virginia Lottery was established in 1987, after Virginians voted in favor of creating a state-operated lottery.
The first tickets were sold the following year, said the Virginia Lottery’s website.
Since 1999, the Virginia Lottery’s profits have supported K-12 public education in the commonwealth, said its website.
In 2023, this amounted to more than $867 million that went to public education in the state.
This was about 10% of the commonwealth’s budget for K-12 schools, said the Virginia Lottery’s website.
These funds are distributed throughout Virginia’s counties.
Gomes lives in Halifax County, noted the Virginia Lottery’s website, which received “more than $4.4 million in Lottery funds for K-12 education last fiscal year.”
During the 2023 fiscal year, the Virginia Lottery had sales of $4.6 billion.
Of those sales, more than $3.5 billion was distributed to lottery winners and the retailers who sold the winning tickets, said the lottery’s website.
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