A Florida mother won a $2 million dollar lottery jackpot on a scratch-off ticket that she purchased the day after her daughter completed her last cancer treatment.
Geraldine Gimblet is having a great week. On Thursday, her beloved daughter finished her final treatment for breast cancer, and the next day she won a fortune.
Her good fortune is extremely well time, because the Lakeland resident had just spent her life savings making sure that her adult child was able to receive the life saving care her condition required.
“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,” Giblet’s daughter told the Florida Lottery.
“My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick,” she detailed. “I’m just so happy for her!”
Gimblet didn’t just get lucky, her persistence played a factor in scoring the jackpot. When she initially tried purchasing the $2,000,000 Bonus Cashword scratch-off game at her local convenience store, the cashier couldn’t find any.
But Gimblet knew that she wanted to play the $10 game, which has a 1-in-3.12 chance of winning, so she asked the cashier again and it paid off insanely well.
“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,” she explained. “He found the last one!”
The crossword puzzle themed scratcher has been a hot ticket since launching in 2022. Gimblet claimed the the the fifth of eight $2 million jackpots, which she won against 1-in-3,921,270 odds.
She chose to collect her winnings in a single, lump-sum payment of $1,645,000.00, which was awarded to her in early January.
Gimblet accepted the lottery’s obscenely large – in physical size and numerous zeros – check, with her mother and daughter by her side.
A North Carolina man recently won a $20 scratch-off ticket that paid $2 million, which was the second time he won the lottery in less than two years.
Pharris Frank bought a scratch-off from the North Carolina Education Fund in 2021, and ended up funding a dream wedding to his then fiance, when he won a cool $1 million jackpot.
Last month, the construction worker was out of town on a job, when he bought a $2,000,000 Diamond Dazzler ticked and scratched off the grand prize.
“It’s crazy because the day before I won, my buddy was asking me how it felt to win $1 million,” he remarked. “And I told him that I was going to double it.”
Frank said that winning for a second time left him “in shock for awhile,” but he immediately called his now wife and told her that he “did it again.”
Like Gimblet, Frank opted to take the lump sum, but took home nearly $450,000 less with a $1.2 million payout.
“It’s cool because the first time I won it was two miles from my house and this time I was four and a half hours away,” he said.
“What are the chances of me being down there at that exact moment in time?”
This time Frank is planning to take his wife on a dream vacation with his winnings.
