North Carolina man’s lucky $20 find turns into $1 million scratch-off win

A North Carolina man’s used a $20 bill he discovered on the ground to purchase a lottery scratch-off ticket that won him a $1 million top prize, officials said.

The find was made Oct. 22 outside a Speedway gas station and convenience store in Boone, North Carolina, 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 stratch-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.

The master carpenter went to lottery headquarters Friday to claim his prize, opting for a $600,000 upfront payment over $50,000 a year for 20 years, netting him $429,007 after federal and state taxes, the lottery said.

Hicks did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He told lottery officials he’ll use the money to help his children and to retire after more than five decades as a carpenter, according to the NC Education Lottery statement.

He also plans to eat. A lot.

“We are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got,” he said of the North Carolina-based buffet chain, according to the statement.

On Monday, NC Education Lottery officials said Cynthia Moore of Smithfield was the first, $1 million top-prize winner for its Cashword scratch-off game, introduced in August, after she purchased a $10 ticket at a market in Wilson. Three other $1 million prizes remain for Cashword, they said in a separate statement.

For two years in a row, lottery officials said in August, NC Education Lottery games have earned more than $1 billion for public schools and other education programs, contributing it to the state’s more than $15 billion in annual education spending.