Lottery player is top dog after impulse buy
By Kate Northrop
MARION, S.C. — A South Carolina woman knew she had to scoop up a dog-themed scratch-off ticket when she saw the new holiday game for sale in the store, and now that she's $30,000 richer, she's glad she listened to her gut.
Animal lovers will tell you that puppy eyes are hard to resist, just how hard it was for one woman to resist picking out a ticket from the South Carolina Lottery's new holiday pup-themed scratch-off game, "Happy Pawlidays!"
While making a stop at the Circle K on E. Liberty Street in Marion, the anonymous player noticed the lottery ticket that featured various dogs, all of them looking to be in a festive holiday spirit. She decided she had to pick one out.
"I love dogs," she told the Lottery.
In the end, her appreciation for man's best friend paid off to the tune of $30,000, the $2 game's top prize. According to the Lottery, she became the game's very first top prize winner.
"No way, no way," she recalled chanting when it dawned on her that she won.
The lucky player is not the only winner in the game either. The dogs featured on the "Happy Pawlidays!" scratch-off tickets received the most votes in a dog photo contest the Lottery hosted in the spring. While every top dog is from South Carolina, one of the dogs, a Springer Spaniel named Belle, lives in Marion, the same town the player bought her winning ticket. That's a dog-gone coincidence right there.
The odds of winning any prize in the game are 1 in 4.43, whereas the odds of winning the $30,000 top prize are 1 in 480,000.
For selling the winning ticket, the Circle K retailer in Marion received a $300 commission.
Three more top prizes of $30,000 are waiting for another lucky player to come sniff them out, while 30 out of 33 second-prizes of $1,000 and 115 out of 135 third-prizes of $250 remain in the game.
Good for her, I love the dogs.
I love dogs too, more than a lot of people that I've encountered on this planet.
Bow wow wow yippee yay yippee yay! Something like that from Atomic Dog!
Dogs are much better than lots of folks out there.
dogs have thar purpose I suppose,but give me a good full sized rotten cat !!
Good story...
Good for the winner!!!
Loving the dogs...too cute...
That's what's so great about the lottery. Where else can you make a $2 investment and turn it into 30 thousand dollars in about 5 seconds? Love these type of stories.
good job always listen to your dog
Dog vibrations that brought in the dollars ,love this
Movie "Enemy of the State" with Gene Hackman.
(though the cat wasn't rotten)