Nicole Pedneault was looking through some items she obtained while on a trip to Japan that had been packed for months when she noticed a slip of paper protruding from a book. This was no ordinary bookmark. Unbeknownst to her, it was a big winning Lottery ticket.
Back in February 2018, Pedneault and Roger Larocque bought a $100, Ultime Loto-Quebec Lottery ticket as a Valentine's Day gift for themselves. When she found it, the ticket was set to expire in just two days. As luck would have it, the couple's ticket was worth $1,000,000 CAD and was claimed just in the nick of time before it expired.
This brings to mind two rules of thumb for your Lottery tickets. First, we always suggest you keep your tickets in a safe place until you're ready to claim them. We'd also suggest that maybe you not keep it someplace so safe you forget where you put it. The second rule of thumb, obviously, is always check your Lottery tickets for winners, especially draw game tickets like Powerball or Mega Millions. Too many times players hear the jackpot was won somewhere else and they forget to look at their tickets for other winners.
We were recently asked, what was the largest winning ticket that has ever gone unclaimed in Idaho? The largest unclaimed prize in Idaho is $1,000,000 on Powerball. This hasn't happened once, but twice. The most notorious one was from March 2010 on a ticket sold in Swan Valley, Idaho ÔÇô near the border with Wyoming. As the legend goes, the ticket was purchased by a traveler who later stopped in a local watering hole in Alpine, Wyoming on his way home. Short on cash, the traveler tipped the waitress with the ticket. At the time, Wyoming didn't have a lottery and the waitress didn't know what it was, so she threw the ticket away. At the end of the night, the ticket, along with the other trash, was burned out back behind the bar. A million dollars went up in smoke.
The first time we heard this story, it seemed far-fetched. Over the years, we've heard this exact same story from local residents and travels alike, probably a half-a-dozen times. The interesting thing about this expired ticket? We never received a single phone call about it. The translation ÔÇô no one ever checked the ticket for being a winner.
The second million dollar winner on Powerball to go unclaimed came from the Maverik located on Locust Grove and McMillan in Meridian. This ticket was from June 2012 and expired a week before Christmas. Imagine the surprise if that ticket HAD been checked during the holidays?
With a couple of growing jackpots on Mega Millions and Powerball ahead this weekend, we encourage everyone who participates to play responsibly, sign the back of your tickets when you buy them, keep your tickets in a safe place you'll remember to find them, and always, always, always check them for winners using our free Check-a-Ticket app, a check-a-ticket device at the store, on our vending machines, or with a clerk. You never know when you might stumble across a million dollar winner!
