A Kentucky woman has won the state lottery after nearly losing the winning ticket by throwing it in the trash.
Pamela Howard-Thornton of Shepherdsville, not far south of Louisville, 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.
But the tickets lay forgotten on her countertop until around 11:30pm that night, she said, when she remembered to play them.
"The first three were not winners so I put them in the trash. 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.
"My mom has always said she would give anything if she could just see me hit a big ticket before something happens to her. When I called her the night I won, she was so thankful and happy for me."
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.
The current Flamingo Bingo run began on May 15 and is ongoing, with one $80,000 prize and eight $1,000 prizes still to be won.
The odds of winning that top prize are one in 360,000, which is is about 50 percent more improbable than being attacked by a grizzly bear during a backcountry hike in Yellowstone National Park — or, assuming you live in the U.S., about 24 times more improbable than being struck by lightning at some point during your lifetime.
