The luckiest day ever: Two lottery wins in one day

Your odds of winning the lottery are astronomically small. You're more likely to be struck by lightning, attacked by a shark, and abducted by aliens all on the same day than you are to collect an eight or nine-figure check from the lottery office.

That's why it seems impossible to win a lottery jackpot more than once, and yet dozens of people have beaten those even higher odds and collected two or more prizes. So what does it mean when someone wins the lottery twice on the same day?

These are the incredible true stories of players whose luckiest day wasn't when they won the lottery, but when they won it twice.

The power of four

Usually, when we buy multiple lottery tickets at once, we’re hoping that just one of them turns out to be a winner. However, one South Carolina woman woke up with the golden touch and found that she just couldn't lose.

The woman, who chose to remain anonymous, decided to make a quick stop at the Stop-a-Mint gas station in Liberty, South Carolina, to buy herself a soda. In addition to the pop, she spent $20 to purchase four Neon Jackpot scratch-off tickets.

She took the tickets back to her car and scratched them in the parking lot.

She uncovered the first two and was pleased to see that they won her money back. She scratched off the third and won an additional $5. Finally, she scratched her final ticket, and that's when her life changed.

Her final ticket hit a jackpot worth $200,000. The woman says she was so excited about her big win that she ran back into the store to hug the first person she could find, and that the staff all congratulated her. “It's a friendly place, that's why I stop there,” she told lottery officials.

When they asked how she felt to win such a big prize, she told them she had no idea, adding, “When it sinks in, I can let you know how it feels. I still haven't wrapped my brain around it.”

She did add that she plans to buy a new home with her winnings. The Stop-a-Mint earned $2,000 for selling the winning ticket.

Double trouble

On Monday morning, November 27, 2017, Kimberly Morris thought she was having a good day. Then, by Monday evening, she was having a spectacular day.

It all started for the North Carolina resident when she stopped by a Harris Teeter supermarket and picked up a $4,000,000 Diamond Dazzler instant-win ticket for $20. While she didn't take home the jackpot, she did pick up a $10,000 prize.

Not one to waste time, she immediately drove to the lottery offices in Raleigh to pick up her five-figure check.

Feeling good on her drive back home to Wake Forest, Morris decided to push her luck and stopped at the Quality Food Mart in Raleigh, where she purchased another $4,000,000 Diamond Dazzler.

“I wasn't really expecting much,” she explained to officials. “I just like playing the lottery.”

She uncovered the ticket and immediately knew she would have to return to the lottery offices because she had just won $1,000,000.

“I was shocked,” she told officials with the North Carolina Education Lottery. “It felt really great to win, but I really have always dreamed I would win $1 million.” She added that she planned to invest her money and share it with her children.

Her husband, who collected the check with her, told officials:

She was freaking out on the phone. I couldn't understand her, so I told her to slow down. When I realized what she was saying, I didn't believe her at first. I had to come home and see it for myself.

For her second prize, Morris elected to take the one-time payout, which meant that after taxes, she scored $417,000 for testing her luck a second time.

Press your luck

If you want to win the lottery twice in one day, it pays to be in the Carolinas. Michelle Shuffler and her husband stopped for a quick snack at the Cubbard Express in Lenoir, North Carolina. Michelle told state lottery officials that they aren't normally big players, but they decided to take a chance that day. Shuffler said:

We don't normally play the lottery. My husband just happened to have some cash in his pocket. At the last second, he decided to buy a ticket.

They picked up a Million Dollar Fever instant win ticket. Michelle scratched it when they returned home and was astonished to see that they had just won $10,000.

“I was in complete disbelief,” Michelle said. “I still am.”

As they celebrated their win, Michelle and her husband discussed the game's top prize of one million dollars and decided to push their luck to see if they could find it. Shuffler continued:

We saw that the game had a million-dollar prize. So we decided, 'Why not try to beat the odds again?'

The Shufflers drove together to the Murphy Express in Granite Falls and picked up another Million Dollar Fever ticket. Michelle scratched it again, and miraculously enough, she won the game's million-dollar prize.

“It's quite astonishing,” she said. “It's a miracle!”

Michelle and her husband traveled together to the state lottery headquarters in Raleigh, where, unlike most winners, she selected the 20-year payout option for her million-dollar prize.

The payout is $50,000 per year, and after taxes, she'll receive checks of $34,753 per year. Michelle says that she plans to use the money for her retirement and to pay for her children's college education.

Lucky accident

We all make mistakes, but we rarely win a six-figure lottery prize because of them. We once again return to North Carolina, where Timothy Emerick decided to purchase a Powerball ticket for a December 2021 drawing at the BJ's Membership Club in Garner, where he worked as a clerk.

To keep things above board, he purchased the ticket from another clerk who worked at the store. Emerick recalled for the reporters:

The gentleman at the store accidentally printed two tickets with the same numbers, so I just decided to buy them both.

It may have been the savviest financial move he has ever made because he matched four white balls and the red Powerball. Normally, that would have netted him $50,000, but he also used the games' 2x multiplier, meaning each of his tickets was worth $100,000.

Emerick cashed in his tickets at the state lottery headquarters, where, after taxes were accounted for, he picked up two checks, each worth $71,251. When asked how he planned to spend his wealth, Emerick gave a surprising answer; he plans to give half of it away to his twin brother. He continued recalling:

I always said if I won, I would share it with him. Over the years, whenever I’ve needed him, he's been there. I think he'd do the same thing if the situation were reversed.

Given how many stories we've seen of lottery wins tearing families apart, it's nice to see one where it brought them together.

Twice as nice

The thing about lottery superstitions is that they don't have to make sense to work. One South Carolina man (of course), who chose to remain anonymous, won big when he bought the same lottery ticket at different stores.

His lucky day started when the man purchased a ticket for the daily draw lottery game Palmetto Cash 5 at the Situ LLC in Darlington, SC. Then the man drove to an EZ shop three miles away and purchased another ticket for the same game with the same numbers, although this time he paid extra for the multiplier.

When asked later why he purchased the same ticket at two different stores, he explained that he had played Palmetto Cash for over a decade without ever winning, so he decided to change up his strategy and try new things to see if that would shake up his luck.

He admitted that he was so used to losing that he didn't even check his tickets after the drawing. It was only when he heard on the news that two stores in Darlington had sold winning tickets that he decided to give them a look. That's when he realized that he had just won a combined $300,000.

“I'm paying off my house. I'm debt-free,” he told state lottery officials. He added that despite finally winning big, he had no intentions of quitting the game.

“Yes, of course. I'm looking forward to it.”

Power player

Sometimes it pays to be forgetful. A Colorado man, who only goes by Joe B, is a multi-millionaire because he didn't keep track of which numbers he played in the March 25, 2020, Powerball drawing.

Joe first stopped at a 7-11 on his way to work and picked up a few tickets for that day's drawing. Then, on the way home, he decided to make another stop on the way home and pick up a few more tickets at the Loaf N' Jug convenience store.

Forgetting that he had already played his lucky numbers in the morning, he picked up a few more tickets with the same numbers he had already played. He watched that night's drawing and realized that he had correctly picked all five white balls, meaning he had just won one million dollars.

However, it was only when he was sorting through his tickets to find the winner that he realized he had two tickets with identical winning numbers, and that he had won $2 million in total.

When asked how he planned to spend his new prize money, Joe only said, “The boss has plans for it.”