Post Falls lottery luck continues
POST FALLS - Lucky Town strikes again.
For the fourth time in the past year, a Post Falls retailer has sold a Mega Millions lottery ticket worth at least $250,000.
The latest one came from Tuesday night's draw.
"That's just a remarkable concentration of winners," said David Workman, Idaho Lottery spokesman. "We've learned in the past year that anything is possible in North Idaho."
The winning numbers were 11, 21, 44, 48, 49 and the Megaball was 23. The winning ticket matched the first five numbers, but not the Megaball itself.
The odds of winning the $250,000 prize is one in 3.9 million.
Workman said it generally takes at least a few days for someone in North Idaho to arrive at lottery headquarters in Boise to claim the prize.
"Our history with North Idaho winners is that it can take them a while to realize they have the ticket, then come to Boise," Workman said.
The lottery does not release the store's name until the ticket is claimed.
In the past year, Idaho has had eight Mega Millions winners of $250,000 or higher with six of those, including last January's jackpot winner, coming from the Coeur d'Alene area. Three of those six winning tickets have been sold in Post Falls.
Among the winning tickets sold in Post Falls was one for $380 million, the second-largest lottery jackpot in United States history. Holly Lahti, a Rathdrum mother of two, bought a winning ticket along with Jim McCullar, a retired Boeing worker from Ephrata, Wash.,
The lottery encourages everyone who has played Mega Millions in the Coeur d'Alene/Post Falls area to check their tickets carefully for winners.
"Too often we've seen players not match the Megaball and think they do not have a winner, when in fact the ticket matched every other number and is worth a quarter-of-a-million dollars," said Jeff Anderson, lottery director.
The winner has 180 days to come forward to claim their winnings. The Mega Millions jackpot for Friday night is an estimated $14 million. The Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night was an estimated at $47 million.
"Winning creates a lot of excitement and we remind everyone who plays, to play what you can afford, don't go overboard," Anderson said. "Please play responsibly."