DES MOINES, Iowa – A Mason City woman credits good luck for her $25,000 lottery win.
“I feel like I’m on a lucky streak right now because I think people go through periods of time like that,” Delores Dodge said Friday as she claimed her $25,000 prize at the lottery’s regional office in Mason City.
Dodge, 72, said she thought she had matched a complete line on her “Bingo Boxes” scratch ticket and had her grandchildren double-check it. Her grandchildren found several numbers that she had missed and that with those numbers included meant she’d won a much bigger prize than she originally thought.
“I knew I had a winner, but I was happy with the line,” Dodge said. “And then they said, ‘No Grandma, you won $500!’ Then they said, ‘No! You won $25,000!’”
Dodge, who is retired, claimed the 12th of 24 top prizes of $25,000 available in the Bingo Boxes game. She said she purchased her winning ticket Thursday at Hy-Vee, 551 S. Illinois St. in Mason City and scratched it off the same day.
After finding out she had won big, Dodge said she was too excited to sleep.
“It was hard to sleep,” she said. “Then I thought my dog chewed my ticket up. I told him, ‘You’re going to be a $25,000 dead dog.’”
Dodge and her husband, James, said they plan to use the lottery winnings to make repairs to their home.