:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/22PTBVQGVFHTNFLRG3PXFVSXHM.jpeg "Woman recovers million lottery ticket she had thrown away")
A Massachusetts woman who accidentally tossed a million dollar lottery ticket finally collected his winnings thanks to the kindness and honesty of the owners of the store where he bought it.
Lea Rose Fiega bought the $30 Diamond Millions Scratch-Off ticket in March at the Lucky Stop store in Southwick, near where she works.
“I was in a hurry, at lunchtime, and I scratched it really fast, I looked at it and it didn’t seem like a winning number, so I handed it over to be thrown away.” She said Monday.
The ticket remained behind the counter for 10 days.
“One night, I was going through the trash tickets and found out that she didn’t scratch a number.”Abhi Shah, the son of the store’s owners, told WWLP-TV. “I scratched the number and there was a million dollars under the ticket”.
Fiega is a regular customer, so the family knew immediately who had discarded it. Then Shah went to see Fiega at work.
“He came to my office and said ‘my mom and dad would like to see you’”, the winner counted. “I replied ‘I’m working’ and he replied ‘no, you have to come’. So I went there and that’s when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.”
Fiega said that overcoming a near-fatal fight with COVID-19 in January was like “winning the lottery,” so she feels doubly lucky.
“I mean, who does that? They are great people. I am more than blessed,” she added.
The store receives a $10,000 state lottery commission bonus for selling the winning ticket. Fiega said she gave the family an additional reward. She is saving the rest for retirement.