Dad of 3 thought someone else won huge lottery jackpot. But it was actually him
Something odd happened when an Alaska man went to check his lottery tickets.
For a brief moment, the Juneau man saw the word “congratulations,” he told lottery officials in a video shared on Lotto Alaska’s Facebook page Sept. 30.
But then, he said, it vanished.
He put his ticket numbers back in the system, but on the screen it showed a player had already scored the Chase the Ace lottery jackpot.
“Oh, someone else won,” he said he thought to himself.
However, “then the phone rang,” he said.
In that phone call with lottery officials, the player learned he was the winner of the $17,373,025.40 jackpot.
The man told his wife about the life-changing win.
“She didn’t believe me at all,” he said. “She thought it was like a hoax or a joke or something.”
The winner said the win hasn’t quite hit him.
“I think it’ll set in once … we see it in the account, ” he said. “I will tell you this though: I did not sleep on Sunday night.”
The man told lottery officials that he usually spends $100 to buy 200 tickets.
When asked how long he’s been taking that approach to buying his tickets, the man looked over to his wife standing off-screen.
“How long you been yelling at me?” the husband asked.
After telling his three daughters about the big win, he said “they thought they were rich.”
“But we reiterated that they are not,” the father joked.
The mine worker said he has some preliminary “bucket list things” he plans to spend some of his winnings on, including paying off his home mortgage, getting out of debt and finally taking a long-awaited trip to Germany to visit some friends.
With one daughter still in high school, the man told lottery officials both he and his wife plan to continue working their day jobs.
“We’ll just keep on trucking,” he said.
