There are plenty of lottery tickets who don’t step up to claim their prize and the officials frequently remind players not to misplace their tickets. Keeping them safe is the right thing to do but it is just as important to make sure that you don’t lose track of them or even worse throw them away. This is exactly what happened to a lucky couple from North Attleborough Massachusetts who threw away $1M lottery ticket. Fortunately for them they realized the mistake in time and recuperated the winning ticket.
A cautionary tale for lottery players
A string of misfortunes and good luck ultimately led to Joseph and Joanne Zagami cash in a $1 million as a result of winning the scratch off lottery. The Massachusetts residents plan on embarking on an epic vacation but instead they had to cancel their plans after the refrigerator broke. What began as a major disappointment for the couple turned into the largest event in their lives, because they chose to play the lottery instead. After buying the tickets, they put them away with the groceries and headed to a local casino to put their luck to the test and completely forgot about the lottery draw.
With all the stress caused by the cancellation of their vacation and more concerned about the petty profits of the casino games, they didn’t remember where the lottery ticket was stored. Joanne realized that it is very likely for the ticket to be resting somewhere in the trash and kindly asked her husband to check up. He took his time and after failing to locate the tickets anywhere in the house, went to sleep only to dig the through the trash the next day.
On the verge of losing $1M lottery ticket
This is not only a cautionary tale for other lottery players but also one that has a happy ending because much to their surprise, the couple realized that the lottery ticket was still there. The natural thing to do was to check the numbers against the winning ones which were extracted the previous night. Much to their surprise, Joanne and Joseph found out that they picked a winner and the $1M lottery ticket recovered from the trash will make up for their canceled vacation.
The lucky couple will first and foremost pay all outstanding debts including the mortgage and in order to deal with this, they chose the lump payment. They received slightly less of a half a million dollars after taxes but the money will cover all immediate expenses and there will be enough left to spend some quality time. Joanne and Joseph had not made too many plans yet but they told the press that after solving more pressing matters they plan on splashing out a bit.
Check out the Queensbury Powerball syndicate wins $1 million ticket as well.
About Joe Knapp
Hello, my name is Joe and you can find me on Google+. I`m lucky enough to be a part of LotteryCrunch.com’s fantastic team and an editor of LotteryPros.com at the same time. Every day we are looking for the best lottery draws, attractive offers, interesting events, latest news, lucky winners’ stories and hot promotions in order to make a life of the lottery players easier. Serving you is our constant priority!
