News writer
It's always a good idea to keep your lottery tickets in a safe place. A place you can remember and put your hand on whenever you need to check your tickets. Leslie Carr, a 52-year-old lottery player from Portland, likes to keep hers tucked away safely in a Tupperware container.
Although they are in a safe place, Leslie doesn't always check her lottery tickets for winners. It was only because she recently heard the news of a billion-dollar Powerball winner that she decided to check her tickets.
She took her Tupperware container down to the Fred Meyer located at 17005 SE Sunnyside Rd Happy Valley – where she usually purchases her lottery games. There were several dozen tickets in the container, and Leslie began to scan them all. After scanning tickets for other games, the last one was a ticket from the Oregon Raffle drawn on March 15, 2024.
The lottery machine suddenly lit up and told Leslie that she needed to go to an Oregon Lottery office to collect her prize. She was so shocked that she asked a staff member at the store to double-check the ticket. When she heard the cashier say that he was unable to cash the ticket because the prize was more than $1,000, she began to get butterflies.
In an interview with lottery officials, Leslie said:
I had no idea I was the winner. If it weren't for the billion-dollar Powerball winner making news, I would have forgot. We don't check our tickets.
Leslie traveled to the lottery headquarters to collect her $1 million prize. She intends to use the money to pay off her mortgage, buy a new truck, and take a long vacation to Hawaii with her husband.
The Oregon Raffle
The Oregon Raffle is an annual lottery game that went on sale in December 2023. The raffle one jackpot prize of $1 million, 300 $500 prizes and 1,500 $100 prizes. The Raffle offers the best odds of willing $1 million than any other Oregon lottery game with 1 in 250,000. All 250,000 Oregon Raffle tickets were sold out by March 8, 2024. The drawing was held on March 25, 2024. Tickets will go on sale later this year for the 2025 Oregon Raffle drawing.
How the lottery helps Oregon
The Oregon Lottery was launched in 1985 with its first game, an instant-win ticket called Pot of Gold. Since then, the Beaver State has contributed more than $502 million to state and local programs. The money has been directed to state parks, natural resources, job creation, veteran services, and Outdoor School - an immersive outdoor education experience for Oregon's 5th and 6th graders.
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