A winning lottery ticket sold in store where I shop

By Andrew Dys - The Herald

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FORT MILL -- No way could a Powerball ticket worth $200,000, bought at the same convenience store where I have bought so many fruitless lottery tickets, go unclaimed.

But it's true.

At 7:15 a.m. Thursday I ran inside and stood there at the counter, amazed. I looked over at the lottery counter where I had filled in so many tickets at that store -- and other stores, too, I shamefully admit -- and thought about how I would spend $200,000.

I did not think of the odds of winning. Or that I never win anything except scorn.

Somebody last week between Wednesday and Saturday bought a ticket with the numbers 2, 4, 21, 36 and 40 on it. This person -- unlike me -- must not check the winning Powerball numbers before paying the orthodontist and phone bill.

This person has not claimed the money.

A blurb about the unclaimed money ran on page 2B of this newspaper Thursday morning. I know because I typed it, with fingers shaking, spittle coming from my mouth.

I know this store so well. A legion of other lottery players know it. The store is always among the top ticket sellers in the whole state, because it is the very first store in South Carolina off Interstate 77 southbound from Charlotte. Exit 90, where more dreams have died than at closing time at a singles bar.

The Carowinds Exxon has Breakfast Blend coffee, Dark Magic coffee, "Our Blend" and even those sissy flavored coffees. All on a coffee island to the left as you walk in the store.

The past few days they have run a special: Buy a large coffee, get a free bottle of water. I have seven bottles of water on the floor of my old beater of a car right now, rolling around next to the losing lottery slips.

Somebody who bought a winning ticket at this store has a bucket of money tucked into a wallet or in a shirt pocket. The ability to pay off a mortgage is unknown as they hustle to work digging a ditch or painting a house or serving waffles at the diners across the street. Or maybe the ticket -- God forbid -- was left in a pants pocket and it went through the washing machine.

"Nobody yet," Exxon manager Ever Martinez said Thursday, in answer to my question if anybody came in to see if his ticket was the winner.

Stephanie Summers Hemminghaus, a spokeswoman for the lottery, repeated Thursday that the ticket hasn't been cashed.

The winning ticket has a shelf life of 180 days. After that, the ticket is worthless. The state keeps the money for ridiculous things like new school buses.

The largest unclaimed prize in S.C. Education Lottery history -- $800,000 -- was sold in Rock Hill, at another store I know at the corner of Cherry Road and Heckle Boulevard. I used to stake out the place afterward and hope for money to walk in.

Money, like always, never came through the doors.