CLIVE, Iowa — A Mason City man who won a $300,000 lottery prize said the feeling was hard to describe.
“I just started screaming,” Gregory Monahan said with a laugh on Monday as he claimed his prize at lottery headquarters in Clive. “Just the biggest rush of excitement ever: That’s the only way I can explain it.”
Monahan, 45, won the third top prize in the Iowa Lottery’s “Ruby Red Crossword” scratch game. His big win came after winning $40 on a ticket in the same game earlier in the day.
“I was going to cash the (ticket) in at the Kwik Star near my work, but I decided not to because I was too tired, so I just started driving home,” he said.
Monahan, a pipefitter, had a change of heart as he neared home and decided to stop at Kwik Star, 1502 S. Federal Ave. in Mason City. He redeemed his $40 prize and bought another ticket in the game, which proved to be the big winner.
“Got home, scratched the QR code and scanned it, and just shocked, just totally shocked,” he said.
Monahan said he hasn’t yet made any decisions about what he’ll do with his winnings.
“I’m going to tuck a lot of it away in the bank right now,” he said. “I’m not going to jump the gun on anything right away.”
Ruby Red Crossword is a $30 scratch game that features 16 top prizes of $300,000, 47 prizes of $10,000 and overall odds of 1 in 2.29.