Huge lottery win gets attention at supermarket. ‘Everybody in the store looked at me’

A huge lottery win for a man inside an Iowa grocery store brought an unintended consequence — all eyes on him.

“Everybody in the store looked at me, and I hollered, ‘I just won a half-million dollars!’” Douglas Langenwalter, 58, told Iowa Lottery officials. “I signed the ticket right away and we got the heck out of there.”

Langenwalter won one of the top prizes in the Iowa Lottery’s $500,000 CA$H scratch-off game. But there remained skepticism, even after a clerk at the Fort Dodge store gave him a winner claim form.

His doubt didn’t go away after his wife scanned the ticket on her phone, revealing the $500,000 win.

“She thought it was an error, so she scanned it again,” Langenwalter told lottery officials. “Neither one of us, until we got down here and had the check in hand, believed it.”

Langenwalter said he plans on saving and investing his winnings.

The $500,000 CA$H game costs $50 to play and six top prizes have been claimed.

But before Langenwalter could accept his prize on Jan. 18, he had a sleepless night as the nerves overcame him.

“Not a wink, up all night long,” he said. “I was just excited but yet scared, because I didn’t know if it was really true.”

Fort Dodge is about 95 miles northwest of Des Moines.

This story was originally published January 22, 2024 at 8:30 AM with the headline "Huge lottery win gets attention at supermarket. ‘Everybody in the store looked at me’."