CLIVE — A northern Iowa man who won a $10,000 prize said that word of his win traveled fast.
“Everybody in the county knows by now,” Alan Christensen said with a laugh on Thursday as he claimed his prize at the lottery’s Mason City regional office.
Christensen, 67, of Wesley, won the 54th prize of $10,000 in the Iowa Lottery’s “$100,000 Mega Crossword” scratch game. He stopped at Kwik Star, 1006 N. 20th St. in Clear Lake, and spotted the $10 scratch game in the store’s ticket display.
“That’s what my wife plays,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll go ahead and buy one of them.”
Christensen took the ticket home, and his wife, Christa, scratched it off. She thought they’d won $1,000 until they scanned the ticket with the Iowa Lottery mobile app.
“We checked it with our phones, and lo and behold, it was $10,000,” Christensen said.
Christensen, who has 18 grandchildren, said the win came at a great time.
“Christmas is coming,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of grandchildren. We plan on spending some on them.”
The $100,000 Mega Crossword is a $10 scratch game that features overall odds of 1 in 3.30, 38 top prizes of $100,000 and 76 prizes of $10,000. For more information about this game, and the number of prizes still available, visit ialottery.com.