Tearful lottery winner calls mom to share the good news. ‘She thought I was playing’
A tearful lottery winner shared the good news with her mom — who didn’t believe her daughter held the lucky ticket at first.
“She thought I was playing so I sent her a picture of it,” winner Belinda Robinson told the North Carolina Education Lottery. “She told me, ‘You always said you were going to win big.’”
Robinson said she likes to buy tickets for new games. So it might not come as a surprise that she was the first person to score the top prize of the Power 5s game, which launched in October.
Robinson spent $5 on her winning scratch-off ticket at the Duck Thru gas station in Camden, roughly 170 miles northeast of Raleigh. She became emotional when she discovered how much it was worth, lottery officials wrote in an Oct. 24 news release.
“I called my mama crying, saying, ‘I won, I won,’” Robinson said in the release. “She told me to calm down because I almost gave her a heart attack.”
Robinson won $250,000 and kept $178,126 after taxes. She is from Elizabeth City, near Camden and home to Elizabeth City State University.
”I’m just so excited,” Robinson told lottery officials. “I still can’t believe it.”
It’s not the first time a jackpot win made a loved one skeptical. In South Carolina, a wife asked if the lottery ticket her husband bought her was fake before the couple split the prize money, McClatchy News reported in 2022.
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Gambling is designed to be a source of entertainment.
If you or a loved one shows signs of gambling addiction, you can seek help by calling the national gambling hotline at 1-800-522-4700 or visiting the National Council on Problem Gambling website.
This story was originally published October 24, 2023 at 3:16 PM with the headline "Tearful lottery winner calls mom to share the good news. ‘She thought I was playing’."
