Truck driver thought he won $1,000 in Virginia lottery – then the zeroes kept coming

Being a truck driver means spending a lot of time on the road. For Virginia trucker Paul Whelan, it also means he can play the lottery when he’s making stops.

One of those stops recently paid off.

Whelan bought a Powerball ticket at a convenience store in Quinton for the Nov. 5 drawing and matched four numbers plus the Powerball number, according to a Jan. 24 news release from the Virginia Lottery. Normally, this would have won him $50,000.

But Whelan had paid one extra dollar on his ticket to add Power Play, which tripled his win, the lottery said.

“At first, I thought it was just a thousand,” Whelan told Virginia lottery officials. “It’s a good feeling!”

Whelan took his $150,000 win back to his home in Colonial Heights, 23 miles south of Richmond.

This story was originally published January 27, 2023 at 8:12 AM with the headline "Truck driver thought he won $1,000 in Virginia lottery – then the zeroes kept coming."

Irene Wright

McClatchy DC

Irene Wright is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter. She earned a B.A. in ecology and an M.A. in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News.