Missouri man who forgot his lunch at home goes out to buy food — and returned $3 million richer

An unexpected turn of fortune can change a person's life in ways that they can never imagine, and this is the case for almost all those who win the lottery. One such story is that of a man from Missouri who went out looking for lunch and ended up bagging a $3 million prize. The anonymous winner told lottery officials that he wouldn't have fetched the winning ticket if he hadn't forgotten his lunch at home that day.

Walking in With an Empty Stomach, Walking Out With Pockets Full

The man's day didn't start on a good note after he got a call from his wife telling him that he had forgotten his lunch at home, leaving him with nothing to eat at work. He didn't want to go back home just to pick up his lunch, and hence went to a grocery store to find a quick fix, as he told the Missouri Lottery. When walked into the store, Arnold had $60 in his pocket and spent half of it on a lottery ticket on an impulse. “I normally don’t play the $ 30 tickets, but since I had $60 that I had won earlier on some other Scratchers tickets, I thought, ‘Why not?’” he said, according to the official press release. 

He bought a “Millionaire Bucks” Scratchers ticket, which he placed under a scanner instead of scratching it, only to realize that he had won the mega prize. “I was completely surprised! I didn’t think I had won,” he said. It took some time for him to realize how many zeroes were there in the amount that he had won. The lucky man had hit the jackpot of $3 million, all because he forgot to carry lunch. He wasted no time and called his wife to share the news who initially refused to believe him, since she's used to the man playing pranks on her.

In a similar case from Salisbury, Maryland, a woman's boredom at work led her to a $150,000 prize, when she took a break and walked into a grocery store to kill time and ended up scratching some $10 lottery tickets. The winner told the Maryland Lottery that it was her third attempt that helped her clinch the $150,000 mega prize when she wasn't expecting it at all.

Much like the Missouri man, the woman from Maryland too couldn't believe what had happened. "I thought it was $50, but it read a $150,000 win," she told the Maryland Lottery. Even her husband couldn't believe that they had won. "It was so hard to believe that she won because I am the one who plays," he said. The woman's husband had to see the ticket for himself, and so he drove to her workplace to take a look and make sure that she had won. The excited couple kept the ticket safe until they drove up to the Maryland Lottery headquarters to claim the prize together.