Could you imagine showing up to your work’s Christmas party, getting a $25 Yankee swap gift and then leaving $175,000 richer….CRAZY! But that is exactly what happened to Lori Janes of Louisville, Kentucky.
Lori works at Harmon Dental and when she went to her work’s Christmas party, she figured she would end up with a $25 gift card to TJ Maxx or something similar. Every year, the workers do a Christmas Yankee Swap, or White Elephant game. Everyone who wants to play buys a $25 gift item and then the items are chosen one by one and the person who chooses an item as the option to keep it, or swap it for an already opened gift.
At the end of the swap, Lori was left with $25 in scratch tickets. They were hers to keep and the game was over!
The first ticket, Lori won $50 – pretty sweet right? However, when she scratched off the $10 jackpot ticket…she matched all 15 numbers and won the $175,000 grand prize!
“Everyone was going insane. People were getting their calculators out and double-checking. A couple of people even scanned the ticket on the lottery’s app, just to make sure,” she said, according to the Kentucky Lottery. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a $25 gift exchange, and I won $175,000!”
So, what she is going to do with her winnings? Her plans are modest. She wants to pay off her daughter’s student loans and her family’s vehicles. “This is so crazy. I’m truly blessed,” she says.