Can you remember the first time you bought a lottery ticket?
You probably held that ticket on you at all times, determined to keep it safe. When the time came for the numbers to be announced, you will have broken out in a sweat, staring at the numbers you’d already memorized, crossing your fingers and toes that today would be your lucky day.
If you’re the sort of person who buys a weekly lottery ticket, it won’t have taken you long to get over that.
With every week that not even a single one of your numbers is called out, you start to lose hope.
In the end, you’re buying tickets without even really paying attention to the fact that you’re buying them. Sometimes, you forget to even check your numbers, and have to go back just in case.
Lea Rose Fiega is an example of why we should always carefully check our tickets.
She nearly paid the price after mistakenly discarding a $1 million lottery ticket that she bought from a Lucky Stop convenience store in Massachusetts.
In this case, Lea Rose didn’t even need to wait for her numbers to be called, as she’d purchased a scratch card.
But despite nabbing herself a winning card, Lea Rose somehow failed to realize that.
Speaking to Fox 57, she explained:
“I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just scratched it real quick, and looked at it, and it didn’t look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away.”
When Lea Rose’s ticket was placed in the mesh trash can behind the counter, she thought nothing else of it.
But then, a couple of days later, Abhi Shah, the son of the store’s owners, made a startling discovery.
There was one number that Lea Rose hadn’t scratched. Out of curiosity, Abhi scratched it off – and discovered that the ticket was a winner – and a $1 million winner at that.
Like anyone would, Abhi first fantasized about what he would do with the winning ticket. He told CBS News:
“I was a millionaire for a night. I decided that I want to buy a Tesla first, and then we’ll see what I’m going to do with the rest of my money.”
But here’s the thing: Lea Rose was a regular at Abhi’s parents’ store.
After Abhi told his mom and dad what happened, they held a family meeting. Very quickly, they came to the joint conclusion that they needed to reunite Lea Rose with the ticket that was rightfully hers.
For Lea Rose, the moment she was called back to the store is still a vivid memory. She recalled:
“He came to my office and said ‘my mom and dad would like to see you’. I said ‘I’m working,’ and he said ‘no, you have to come over.’ So I went over there and that’s when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.”
Lea Rose already felt lucky this year – she had recovered from a near-fatal bout with COVID-19 in January. She had already “won the lottery”, and now, she was doubly fortunate.
Abhi’s parents’ store did get rewarded, too, with a nice $10,000 bonus from the state lottery commission.
Lea Rose thanks the family by giving them an additional reward, and plans to save the rest of her winnings for retirement.
You can watch a video of this unbelievable story of fortune just below.
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