A Connecticut-based man has discovered that his lost lottery ticket earned him big bucks.
School bus driver Russell Ruff tested his luck on Friday the 13th last month by buying a lottery ticket at a gas station in Somers, Connecticut, according to a news release shared Monday by the Connecticut Lottery.
While he lost the ticket shortly after purchasing, he thought it was “miraculous” that his 16-year-old cat was the one who discovered where the Powerball ticket was.
“We lost the ticket at home. It went behind a headboard, and we didn’t think too much of it,” he said in the release. “We didn’t really check the numbers.”
Ruff explained that he had to move his bed when he realized the cat was stuck behind it. And from there, both the lottery ticket and the cat were found.
Once Ruff scanned the ticket multiple times, using the Connecticut Lottery app, he realized that his ticket was worth $150,000. “It was a miracle,” he said.
The Powerball drawing took place June 14, which Ruff missed because he lost the ticket he’d bought the day before. However, with the ticket back in his possession, he realized he had four of the five winning numbers, plus the Powerball number.
He also had Power Play added to his ticket, which allows you to multiply your non-jackpot winnings by a specific amount. As a result, Ruff’s prize increased from $50,000 to $150,000.
Many lottery players have shared their experiences discovering a lost ticket. In June, a Kentucky woman, Pamela Howard-Thornton, won the state lottery after nearly losing the winning ticket by throwing it in the trash.
Howard-Thornton bought four tickets for the Flamingo Bingo scratch-off game at a rest stop store in nearby Lebanon Junction after having a dream about winning a large jackpot.
“I just had this premonition – go get that ticket,” she told lottery officials.
“The first three were not winners, so I put them in the trash,” she added. “Then I was like ‘Where’s my fourth ticket?’ I looked in the trash and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I threw it away.’”
Luckily, Howard-Thornton was able to recover the ticket and won the game's top prize of $80,000, or $57,600 after taxes. “I scanned it, of course, I started crying, and I started shouting and screaming," she said. “I immediately called my daughter and my mom.”
Howard-Thornton told lottery officials she would use the money to buy a new car, pay off bills, and make a gift for her mom.
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