Road trip ends with South Carolina woman getting rich in North Carolina lottery

A South Carolina woman’s road trip into neighboring North Carolina just made her wealthy enough to buy the house of her dreams.

Beverly Vercher of Spartanburg was about 40 miles from home when she stopped and bought a $10 lottery ticket at Esha Food Mart in Shelby, N.C., according to a release from the N.C. Education Lottery. Shelby is in Cleveland County, about 45 miles west of Charlotte.

Her Power 10s ticket proved to be worth $1 million, officials said. However, winning almost felt too easy, so Vercher had a companion double check the ticket — to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

“When I scratched it, it was the very first number,” she said in the release. “First, I was kind of numb. I didn’t really realize it was still true. It still didn’t set in until the next day.”

The odds of winning that much are 1 in 1,440,000, state officials say.

She drove to Raleigh Tuesday to pick up her winnings.

“Vercher had a choice of taking the $1 million as an annuity of $50,000 a year over 20 years, or a lump sum of $600,000,” lottery officials said. “She chose the lump sum of $600,000 and took home $424,503 after federal and state tax with holdings.”

She and her husband already have a plan worked for how to spend it, the release said.

“We’ve been trying to buy a home for months,” she said. “There were certain obstacles we were facing, but now we’re able to buy it without any problems.”.

This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 11:24 AM with the headline "Road trip ends with South Carolina woman getting rich in North Carolina lottery."