Geraldine Gimblet, a mother who spent her entire life savings to pay for her daughter’s cancer treatment, miraculously won a $2M lottery a day after the last round of her medical treatment came to an end.
Gimblet won the major reward after buying the last available ticket for the ‘$2,000,000 Bonus Cashword Scratch-Off’ game at a gas station in Lakeland, near Tampa, the Daily Mail reported.
The gas station staffer initially told her that no more tickets for the jackpot were available but she insisted that the attendant re-check.
Shortly after, the latter found one final ticket for the game. When she won, Gimblet beamed in the photo alongside her daughter and granddaughter as well as the Chief of Staff of the lottery.
Gimblet’s daughter, who has not been named, shared that her mother used all of her life savings for her breast cancer treatment. “The day before my mom bought this ticket, I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer,” she told Florida Lottery, the New York Post reported, adding, “My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick. I’m just so happy for her.”
“At first the gas station clerk thought there were no tickets left, but I asked him to double check because I like the crossword games the best. He found the last one!” She traveled to the with her daughter and granddaughter to the Florida Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee to claim her prize and collected an opted lump sum payment of $1,645,000.
Florida Lottery Chief of Staff, Reggie Dixon, joined the family in their celebrations. Gimblet’s ticket had a 1-in-3.9 million chance of winning. That’s not all, the retailer that sold her the ticket, Pipkin Road Beverage Castle, will receive a $2,000 bonus commission.
Gimblet played a game in which players are given 20 letters and three separate games and required to match three or more words in each game with their letters to win the listed cash prize.
Players can also win in all three games. If one of the completed words contains the “MONEYBAG” symbol, players get the chance of doubling the corresponding prize mentioned in the prize legend for that game for the total number of words completed.