ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — A Missouri Lottery player struck it big when he matched all five white-ball numbers in a Powerball drawing — but he wouldn't know it until he checked his ticket three months later.
The Missouri Lottery announced on Wednesday that the winner had claimed his $1 million ticket at the lottery's headquarters on March 29. The winning numbers for the Jan. 2 drawing were 7, 9, 12, 31 and 62, with a Powerball number of 22.
“I have an alarm set for me to check my tickets every three months,” the unnamed winner said in a Missouri Lottery news release. “So I didn’t know for a while.”
When his alarm went off, he checked a ticket that he'd purchased three months prior from the On the Run gas station on Manchester Road in Rock Hill. That's when he learned he'd been sitting on $1 million.
“I told my wife, and she thought it was a joke,” he said.
The winner said he planned to put most of the money into his retirement and do some home improvement projects.
Powerball is $2 per play with drawings held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 9:59 p.m.