STANLY COUNTY, N.C. — Three days after word went out that someone from Stanly County had won $2 million in a Powerball drawing, Jacque Kendrick walked back into the store where she bought her ticket and used a lottery ticket checker to check her luck.
Up popped a message: “Winner. Claim at lottery headquarters.”
Kendrick, a server at a restaurant, plays Powerball and Mega Millions weekly. She has a rule: Buy just one ticket per drawing, and she never expected to win. So she turned to the clerk at the Alco on U.S. 52 in Albemarle and asked what the message meant.
“The lady’s face turned white,” Kendrick said Monday at lottery headquarters. “She said, ‘Honey, you need to put that up for safekeeping. That’s worth a substantial amount of money.’”
Kendrick, who lives in New London, signed her ticket, left the store and told her husband, Eddie, the good news. But they still didn’t know how much they had won. Then Kendrick's daughter emailed a news story from WXII-TV in Winston-Salem about the $2 million win in Stanly County in the Nov. 18 Powerball drawing.
The five winning numbers needed for the $2 million win were all on Kendrick’s Quick Pick ticket, beating odds of 1 in 11.7 million.
“I dropped to my knees and started thanking the good Lord," Kendrick said. "That’s exactly how it was.”
Because she bought a $3 Power Play ticket, the regular $1 million prize for matching all five white balls was automatically doubled. After the required tax withholdings, she received $1,385,000. Kendrick said she and her husband planned to help their daughters, but that most of the money would be saved and invested for retirement.
“We’re not rich,” she said. “We’re not poor, but we work for everything we’ve got. And we’ve worked hard. We need to be set, whenever we are old and retired.”
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