News writer; Opinion columnist
Have you ever lost a $20 bill or misplaced your wallet? It never feels great to lose any amount of money, so imagine how it would feel to throw away one million dollars.
Although lottery winners receive all the attention, the simple truth is that 99% of tickets are worthless, meaning the vast majority end up in the trash. That's why it's not surprising that sometimes winning tickets worth millions end up in the garbage instead of at state lottery offices.
These are true stories of players who accidentally threw away million-dollar winners, and what they had to do to get them back from the trash man.
Kindness of strangers
We've all had the fantasy of finding a briefcase full of cash abandoned on the street somewhere. Something with no identifying marks that no one else could claim. But what would you really do if you found one million dollars that someone else had lost?
The answer for one Massachusetts store owner was to give it back. This misadventure began in 2022, when Lea Rose Fiega stopped by the Lucky Stop convenience store in Southwick, Massachusetts, during her lunch break.
She purchased a $30 Diamond Million instant-win ticket at the store and scratched it off at the counter. She later told reporters:
I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just scratched it real quick, and looked at it, and it didn't look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away.
However, the store was busy that day, and instead of throwing it out, the clerk left it on the counter for a few days before dropping it in the trash, where Abhi Shah, the store owner's son, saw it and realized she hadn't uncovered the entire ticket. She explained to the press:
One evening, I was going through the tickets from the trash and found out that she didn't scratch the number. I scratched the number, and it was $1 million underneath the ticket.
While Shah initially considered buying a Tesla with the money, he discussed with his family what they should do with the ticket, and they persuaded him that the right thing to do was to return it to the rightful owner.
My grandmother said, 'Let's not keep the ticket. It's not right. Just give it back to them. If it's in your luck, you will get it anyhow.
Shah agreed to take his grandmother's advice. Fiega was a regular customer in the store, and he knew where she worked.
Fiega continued the story:
He came to my office and said, 'My mom and dad would like to see you. I said, 'I'm working,' and he said, 'No, you have to come over.' So I went over there, and that's when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.
Fieg added that she survived a severe case of COVID in January of 2022, so she felt as if she’d won the lottery twice.
"I mean, who does that? They're great people. I am beyond blessed," she added.
Heart breaker
2019 was a tough year for 59-year-old Jeff Heining. Wendy Heinig, Jeff's wife, told reporters:
We've had a rough start to the year. Earlier this year, Jeff had a massive heart attack and actually died three times before they saved his life.
But as they say, it's always darkest before the dawn, and a few months after surviving his heart attack, Jeff bought a ticket for Lucky for Life from the Michigan Lottery, playing the exact numbers he uses for every drawing: 03-04-08-16-27. Jeff said:
I bought a Lucky For Life ticket last Wednesday and then checked it on the Lottery's website Thursday morning. I didn't match any of the numbers on the site, so I threw my ticket away.
However, when Jeff rechecked the site, he noticed something he had missed the first time:
I was back on the website Friday, and the Lucky For Life numbers caught my eye. They were the numbers I always play, and that's when it hit me that I had checked my ticket before the drawing had happened. I searched high and low for the ticket, but couldn't find it anywhere until I went rifling through the trash.
Fortunately, Jeff finally found his ticket at the bottom of a trash can, and he didn't have to endure two pieces of bad luck that year. His winning ticket was worth $25,000 a year for the rest of his life. Jeff recalled:
When I found it, my heart was pounding. I called my wife, who was out running errands, and she immediately thought something was wrong. I told her I had good news, and she needed to get home as soon as she could.
Jeff and Wendy claimed their prize at the Michigan Lottery headquarters in Lansing and elected to receive a lump-sum payout of $390,000. The couple told officials that they planned to use the money to take a vacation, pay off their bills, and help out their family.
“I’m still searching for the words to describe winning; it's so surreal,” Jeff said.
Wendy added that the win felt extra special after her husband's heart attack. “We're all so fortunate to still have him with us, and winning this prize means we can enjoy doing some fun things together that we couldn't have afforded before.”
Dumpster dive
Jeff Heining wasn't the only Michigan man to dramatically change his life with a timely lottery win. A homeless man from Bay County experienced an incredible piece of good fortune after winning half of the $9.6 million jackpot from Michigan's Lotto 47 game.
The man, who chose to remain anonymous, said he was out for a walk on October 11, 2019, when he looked up the winning numbers and recognized them as his own: 05-12-24-31-35-42. However, he told reporters that his big win almost never happened after he lost his lucky play slip:
I have been playing the same numbers on Lotto 47 for more than two years. I always use the same playslip to buy my tickets. In fact, a few months ago, I accidentally threw it away and had to climb in a dumpster to get it back. I am so lucky that I found it!
The winner chose to take the lump-sum payout and walked away with $3 million, which he says is more than enough to turn his life around:
It's been a rough couple of years for me. An injury caused me to go on disability, and I haven't been able to find any work. Winning this prize has turned my life around in an instant. It means I can finally get some medical procedures that I couldn't have afforded before. This will undoubtedly improve my quality of life.
Michigan
Lottery tickets must be slippery in the Great Lakes state because yet another couple from Michigan threw away a $2 million ticket in 2018.
The adventures in dumpster diving began for one Macomb County couple, who chose to remain anonymous, when the husband bought his wife a $20 Multiplier Spectacular scratch-off ticket as a birthday present.
The wife uncovered the ticket, thought it was a loser, and tossed it. However, the husband decided to seek out a second opinion. He pulled the ticket out of the trash and took it to his local lottery retailer, where it was scanned, and their $2 million win was confirmed.
"We don't consider ourselves to be lucky, so this was a nice surprise,” the woman's husband, who claimed the prize, told the Michigan Lottery.
The couple chose the lump sum payout and received a one-time cash payment of $1.3 million. They said they plan to use the money to pay for their children's college education.
The ticket was purchased at Kassa's Market in Harrison Township.
Dream big
It all started with a dream for one Kentucky woman, before her dream ended up in the garbage can.
In June 2025, Pamela Howard-Thornton of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, had a prophetic dream that told her she would win big in the lottery. The next day, she went to her local Speedway convenience store in Lebanon Junction, where she bought an instant-win ticket.
She took it home, uncovered it, and discovered that she had won $200. But she still felt that that wasn't the big win her dream had promised. So she went back to the Speedway and purchased four Flamingo Bingo scratch-off tickets. In a press release, she stated:
They laid on the counter all day long. I had forgotten about them, so at about 11:30 that night, I decided to play them. The first three were not winners, so I put them in the trash. Then I was like, 'Where's my fourth ticket?' I looked in the trash, and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I threw it away.'
Fortunate that she did, because after rescuing the fourth ticket and uncovering it, she discovered that it was an $80,000 winner, and she had fulfilled the promise of her dream. Howard-Thornton told lottery officials:
I immediately called my daughter and my mom. My mom has always said she would give anything if she could just see me hit a big ticket before something happens to her. When I called her the night I won, she was so thankful and happy for me.
Howard-Thorton collected $57,600 after paying her taxes. She told lottery officials that she plans to use the money to pay for a new car and take care of her mother.
They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure, and that's never been truer than for someone tossing out a winning ticket. So before you shred, dump, or discard your tickets, make sure you scan them with an app or at a retailer so you can be sure you're not dumping a literal suitcase full of money in the trash.
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