Winning the lottery can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, except for one Virginia man who won hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Powerball twice in the same drawing this month.
Ben Baker, of Covington, bought a total of 10 tickets for the March 4 Powerball drawing at his local Food Lion grocery store, according to the Virginia Lottery.
Baker managed to match four of the winning numbers plus the Powerball number on two of his tickets for what normally would have been a $50,000 prize for each winning ticket.
The winning numbers in that drawing were 10-16-18-40-66, and the Powerball number was 16, according to a press release issued by the Virginia Lottery on Friday.
However, Baker had a little more luck on his side.
Baker spent an extra dollar on each ticket for the Power Play, which tripled the winning prizes to $150,000 each, the lottery said.
From the two winning tickets, Baker won a total of $300,000.
Baker put it simply: “I was really lucky!”
He told the lottery that he intends to use some of his winnings to improve his home and save the rest.
Powerball drawings are held at 10:59 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to the lottery. The overall odds of winning any Powerball prize are 1 in 25.
Earlier this month, a Michigan woman almost missed out on winning a $1 million Powerball prize.
Ana Elizalde, 51, of Lansing, bought the ticket in February and gave it to her husband for safekeeping, she told the Michigan Lottery.
“A week after the drawing my husband found the ticket in his coat pocket and realized we had never checked it,” Elizalde said. “We went to the store to scan it and got a message to file a claim. When we checked the numbers online and realized we’d won $1 million.”
Elizalde told the lottery board she plans to use her Powerball Prize to pay bills, her children’s education and savings.
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