A North Carolina man used a $20 bill he discovered on the ground to buy a lottery scratch-off ticket that won him a $1 million top prize, officials said.
He found the bill last Tuesday outside a Speedway gas station and convenience store in Boone, the NC Education Lottery said in a statement Friday.
The winner plucked the bill from the ground and used it to fund most of his purchase of a $25 Extreme Cash scratch-off ticket, which touts instant prizes of $40 and that top prize, it said.
Winner Jerry Hicks is from nearby Banner Elk, a Blue Ridge Mountains town between two ski resorts that is also in a region, Avery County, hit hard by last month’s post-Hurricane Helene flooding.
Hicks didn’t set out to play Extreme Cash.
“They actually didn’t have the ticket I was looking for, so I bought that one instead,” he said in the statement.
Hicks, a master carpenter, went to lottery headquarters Friday to claim his prize, opting…
