Dad wakes daughters to tell them he won lottery. ‘I’m pretty sure we scared them’
A dad won a huge lottery prize — and he couldn’t wait to share the news with his family.
“I called my daughters and woke them up to tell them,” David Meares told the North Carolina Education Lottery. “I’m pretty sure we scared them because we called at 12:30 in the morning.”
The 60-year-old father said he was “tickled to death” when he discovered his lottery ticket was worth $25,000 a year for life. Now, he hopes to buy UTVs so his relatives can ride them together.
“Family is the number one thing to me,” the winner told lottery officials in an Oct. 14 news release. “All for one and one for all.”
Meares won big after he spent $2 on an online ticket for the Lucky for Life game. It was late when he discovered he won the game’s second-tier prize.
“I was up all night long,” Meares said. “My adrenaline was flowing.”
It turns out, his ticket beat 1-in-1.8 million odds to match all but one number picked in the Oct. 5 drawing. His win ushered in a lucky streak, given another North Carolina lottery player won a $25,000 a year prize the following night, McClatchy News reported.
Though lottery officials originally said Meares was from Clarkton, he lives nearby in Columbus County, a roughly 60-mile drive west from Wilmington.
The lucky winner won’t take his prize in annual payments. Instead, he opted for the lump sum of $390,000 and kept $279,826 after taxes.
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 9:34 AM with the headline "Dad wakes daughters to tell them he won lottery. ‘I’m pretty sure we scared them’."
