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September 24, 2009
For nearly six months, Lydia Burke of Mechanicsville had a Mega Millions ticket worth $250,000 and she didn’t know it! The ticket sat in a napkin holder in her kitchen.
Then on September 23, she happened to see a news report that a Mega Millions ticket purchased at the 7-Eleven located at 2413 Staples Mill Road in Richmond was about to expire. She remembered buying a ticket at that store, so she checked the ticket in her napkin holder.
“Oh my goodness, when I saw that ticket and saw those numbers, I screamed, ‘I got it! I got it!’” she later said.
Ms. Burke and her husband Gregory presented the ticket to Virginia Lottery officials at 9:00 a.m. on September 24 – just eight hours before the ticket would have expired.
According to Virginia Lottery rules, winning tickets expire 180 days after the drawing. Her ticket was for the March 27, 2009, Mega Millions drawing. It matched the first five numbers and only missed the Mega Ball number to win Mega Millions’ second prize of $250,000. The winning numbers for that drawing were 10-15-24-38-50 and the Mega Ball number was 19. The ticket was set to expire at 5:00 p.m. on September 24.
Ms. Burke told Lottery officials she and her husband plan to use their winnings to take their first vacation in years.
All Virginia Lottery unclaimed prize money goes to the state Literary Fund. The Literary Fund is used solely for educational purposes, such as school construction, renovation and teacher retirement funding. Since its inception in 1988, the Lottery has transferred more than $190.1 million in unclaimed prizes to the Literary Fund.
Nearly 95 cents of each dollar spent on the Virginia Lottery by players goes back to the Commonwealth in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retailer commissions. Since 1999, all Virginia Lottery profits have been designated solely to K-12 public school education in the Commonwealth. In that time, the Lottery has turned over more than $4 billion for Virginia’s public schools. The latest annual profits of $439.1 million currently represent about 6 percent of state funding for public education in Virginia. In 21 years, the Lottery has sold more than $21.1 billion in tickets, awarded more than $1.1 billion in retailer commissions and paid more than $11.6 billion in prizes to players.
Please play responsibly.
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