Store Owners Return Winning Lottery Ticket to Woman After She Threw It Away

A Springfield, Massachusetts woman who accidentally threw away a $1 million lottery ticket was able to collect her winnings after the store owners were kind enough to track her down, People reports.

Per the Massachusetts State Lottery, Lea Rose Fiega won $1 million in the state’s “Diamond Millions” instant game on March 30, a pre-tax cash prize she scored from a $30 ticket bought at Lucky Stop in Southwick. However, Fiega almost lost her shot at her winnings when she discarded the ticket, assuming it wasn’t a winner.

“I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just scratched it real quick, and looked at it, and it didn’t look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away,” Fiega told ABC News on Monday.

The ticket sat discarded in the store for 10 days.

“One evening, I was going through the tickets from the trash and found out that she didn’t scratch the number,” Abhi Shah, the son of the store’s owners told WWLP-TV. “I scratched the number and it was $1 million underneath the ticket.”

Luckily, Fiega is a regular customer, so the family was able to track her down. 

“He [Shah] came to my office and said ‘my Mom and Dad would like to see you,’” Fiega said. “I said ‘I’m working,’ and he said ‘no you have to come over.’ So I went over there and that’s when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.”