A man who found $20 on the ground used it to buy a $1 million winning lottery ticket

A North Carolina resident hit the jackpot twice: First when he found $20 on the ground outside a convenience store, and a second time when he spent the money to buy a $25 winning scratch-off lottery ticket worth $1 million. 

The man, Jerry Hicks of Banner Elk, North Carolina, told the state education lottery that he used the $20 he found outside the Speedway convenience store in Boone, North Carolina, to buy an Extreme Cash scratch-off card because the type of lotto ticket he usually buys wasn’t available.

Hicks said he planned to use the winnings to retire after working for 56 years as a carpenter, as well as to help his children. He also had more immediate plans, telling the lottery, “We are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got.”

Hicks opted to take a lump sum payment of $600,000, rather than receiving the prize as an annuity of $50,000 over 20 years. After state and federal tax withholdings, his take-home winnings amount to $429,007, the lottery said.

The $1 million prize is the highest amount available to win in the Extreme Cash game, according to the North Carolina Education Lottery. The odds of winning are 1 in 2,017,650.