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Girl from struggling family finds winning lottery ticket, uses money to help others

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Phoebe Brown is just 7 years old. Her family has seen their fair share of hardship, so when she found a winning lottery ticket on the ground, she decided it was time to pay it forward.

Phoebe was shopping with her family in Independence, Missouri, when she found a scratch-off lottery ticket lying on the ground.

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"She's like, 'Mom, Mom, it's a winner!' I said, 'No it's not'," Audrey Brown, Phoebe's mother, told WDAF. "It was. It was a $100 winner."

Rather than use the money for herself, Phoebe used the cash to buy $100 worth of groceries and donate it all to her school’s food drive.

Her family says they’re proud of her generosity.

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“There have been times where I’ve been out of work, and we had nowhere to stay and our family’s taken us in and helped us out. We’re thankful for our friends and our family,” said Joshua Brown, Phoebe’s dad.

Phoebe’s donation helped the school meet its goal, collecting more than 1,700 canned goods and household items.

>> Watch the news report