KARMA'S A GIFT: Woman wins $2M after using up life savings for daughter's cancer treatment
LAKELAND, FLORIDA: Geraldine Gimblet, a Florida mother, who spent her entire life savings to pay for her daughter's cancer treatment, miraculously won a $2M lottery a day after the last round of medical treatment came to an end.
Gimblet won the major reward after buying the last available ticket for the ‘$2,000,000 Bonus Cashword Scratch-Off’ game at a gas station in Lakeland, near Tampa, the Daily Mail reported. The gas station staffer initially told her that no more tickets for the jackpot were available but she insisted that the attendant re-check. Shortly after, the latter found one final ticket for the game. When she won, Gimblet beamed in the photo alongside her daughter and granddaughter as well as the Chief of Staff of the lottery.
READ MORE
Who is Joni Thompson? Michigan woman wins $1M powerball prize on her first-ever lottery ticket
‘I’m just so happy for her’
Gimblet’s daughter, who has not been named, shared that her mother used all of her life savings for her breast cancer treatment. “The day before my mom bought this ticket, I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer,” she told Florida Lottery, the New York Post reported, adding, “My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick. I'm just so happy for her."
"At first the gas station clerk thought there were no tickets left, but I asked him to double check because I like the crossword games the best. He found the last one!" She traveled to the with her daughter and granddaughter to the Florida Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee to claim her prize and collected an opted lump sum payment of $1,645,000.
Florida Lottery Chief of Staff, Reggie Dixon, joined the family in their celebrations. Gimblet's ticket had a 1-in-3.9 million chance of winning. That's not all, the retailer that sold her the ticket, Pipkin Road Beverage Castle, will receive a $2,000 bonus commission.
What was the game Geraldine Gimblet played?
Gimblet played a game in which players are given 20 letters and three separate games and required to match three or more words in each game with their letters to win the listed cash prize. Players can also win in all three games. If one of the completed words contains the “MONEYBAG” symbol, players get the chance of doubling the corresponding prize mentioned in the prize legend for that game for the total number of words completed.
A ticket for the jackpot game costs $10 and the overall odds of winning are 1-in-3.12, per the Florida Lottery website. The game was launched in May 2022 and features eight top prizes of $2M and 20 second tier prizes of $100,000. Scratch-off games are considered an important part of the Florida Lottery's portfolio of games and have reportedly garnered more than $17.69B for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund (EETF), the company mentioned in a statement.