Mom of six checks lottery ticket. $2 million prize had her ‘jumping up and down’
A mom of six checked her lottery ticket — and couldn’t “contain her excitement.”
“I was jumping up and down screaming,” Trena Nicholson told the North Carolina Education Lottery.
Nicholson — who always had a “feeling” she would win big — finally scored a $2 million prize. She rushed to tell her children the good news.
“I called my daughter and was like, ‘I won, I won, I won,’” the lucky mom told lottery officials, according to an Aug. 22 news release.
Nicholson got richer after she stopped at a Speedway gas station in Hamlet, a roughly 80-mile drive southeast from Charlotte. While there, she tried her luck on the Ruby Red 7’s scratch-off game.
It turns out, her $20 ticket scored one of the top prizes in the game. She did a double take when she saw how much the ticket was worth.
“I had to look at it again to make sure I was seeing it right,” said Nicholson, who lives in Hamlet.
The winner chose to take her prize as a lump sum of $1.2 million, which totaled $861,006 after taxes. Now, she plans to put the money toward bills and her kids.
It’s not the first time a North Carolina mother has scored a life-changing win. Another mom planned to take a family vacation after she hit the jackpot, McClatchy News reported in July.
This story was originally published August 22, 2025 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Mom of six checks lottery ticket. $2 million prize had her ‘jumping up and down’."
