Thanks to an honest mistake, Christmas got a whole lot sweeter.
New Hampshire resident Scott Bennett hit the $2.1 million Tri-State Megabucks jackpot last week after purchasing what he believed was a ticket for an entirely different game.
On a whim, Bennett, 48, stopped into the Circle K convenience store in his hometown of Hillsborough, N. H., and told the clerk he wanted one ticket each for the Lucky for Life and Megabucks games.
But as fate would have it, the clerk, 42-year-old Nicki Gee, misunderstood Bennett.
“The clerk sold him two Tri State Megabucks Plus tickets,” Maura McCann, New Hampshire Lottery director of marketing, told WMUR news. “He never got his Lucky For Life ticket.”
After the winning numbers were revealed, Bennett’s son called to tell him that the winning ticket had been sold in the family’s neighborhood.
“I went downstairs, and he was sitting there with the ticket in one hand and the New Hampshire Lottery website on the computer, just staring at both of them,” Bennett’s wife, Cathy, told WMUR. “We must have checked them about 15 times. We really truly didn’t believe it.”
Opting for a one-time lump payment of $1.3 million, the Bennetts say that they will use their sudden windfall to pay down student loan debt for two of their children, send their third child to college, remodel their kitchen, and maybe purchase a few extra Christmas presents.
Other than that, Scott, a property manager, and Cathy, a worker in the public school system, say that they have no intention of quitting their jobs.
“We’re going to keep working,” Cathy Bennett told the Union Leader. “We both love our jobs.”
The Bennett’s aren’t the only one’s to be benefitting from Gee’s mistake. John Collopy, the owner of the Circle K that sold the winning ticket, will receive a $21,500 bonus, and he plans on sharing some of that with his workers, including Gee.
“Those are the kinds of mistake we like to have happen here,” Collopy said.
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