Call interrupts woman’s work meeting with good news — she hit NC lottery jackpot
A lottery player was at work when she received a big surprise: She hit the jackpot.
“I was actually in a meeting when I got the call,” Bonny Harmon told the North Carolina Education Lottery in an April 15 news release. “I told all my coworkers, ‘Guess what? I just won the lottery.’”
Harmon — who was “overwhelmed” when she heard the good news — considered whether she would finish her shift.
“I feel like I should punch out and go home for the rest of the day,” she said in audio from a phone call that lottery officials posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.
Harmon scored $250,000, the top prize in a second-chance drawing. She first tried her luck on the Multiply the Cash game, which offers scratch-off tickets starting at $1. Then she entered one of her tickets into a drawing, beating out more than 33 million entries to win big, lottery officials wrote in the release and in an email to McClatchy News.
“Thank goodness there was a chair there because I thought I was going to pass out,” Harmon said. “I had to sit down.”
The lucky winner lives in Sanford, a roughly 40-mile drive southwest from Raleigh. She kept $179,375 after taxes and now plans to spend extra time with family.
“I was on cloud nine,” Harmon told lottery officials. “My head is still up there in the clouds.”
It’s not the first time a lottery player has learned of a big win while on the job. In Maryland, a courthouse worker started “screaming” when she found out she won $100,000, McClatchy News reported in January.
This story was originally published April 15, 2025 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Call interrupts woman’s work meeting with good news — she hit NC lottery jackpot."
