$100,000 Massachusetts lottery ticket found in junk drawer just before it was going to expire
A woman in western Massachusetts won a $100,000 lottery prize after finding her ticket in a junk drawer just before it was about to expire.
Margot Garstka got her $1 Mass Cash ticket at a supermarket in Chicopee back in April 2024 during a state lottery promotion.
She brought the ticket home and tossed it in the drawer next to a couple of screwdrivers.
Her numbers, 6-11-18-24-26, came up in the drawing on May 1, but Gartska never checked them. Months went by and no one claimed the $100,000 prize.
Two weeks ago, her son heard about an unclaimed ticket that was close to expiring.
"My son saw it on the news and said, 'Ma, you got a ticket in that drawer,' and we looked at the numbers and they were right," she said in a statement released by the Massachusetts Lottery on Wednesday.
Garstka went to the lottery's claim center in West Springfield Tuesday and picked up her prize, which will actually be less than $100,000 after taxes are taken out.
According to the lottery, she plans to save the cash and share some of it with her great grandchildren.
The store where Garstka got the ticket, the Big Y on Memorial Drive in Chicopee, ended up with a $1,000 bonus from the lottery.
If Garstka didn't claim the prize in time, the money would have been moved into the profits pool that the lottery distributes to all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts.
