“I had to look at it like five hundred times,” the husband said about the winning ticket.
Virginia Lottery
When firefighter Michael Anderson saw how much he won in the Virginia lottery’s New Year raffle, he had to look again. And again, and again.
“I had to look at it like five hundred times!” he told lottery officials in a Jan. 12 news release.
The prize stayed the same each time he laid his eyes on the ticket, though: he won $1 million in Virginia’s New Year’s Millionaire Raffle.
Michael and his wife, Mechelle, learned of their stunning prize on Jan. 1. They both live in Henrico and worked together as firefighters in Richmond City, according to lottery officials.
Now Mechelle is retired and Michael still works as a first responder, he told lottery officials.
Michael bought his lucky ticket at a CVS in Henrico, lottery officials said. Five tickets in the raffle had a $1 million prize.
Other winning tickets were bought in Danville, Burke, Midlothian and Woodbridge, according to the Virginia Lottery.
Henrico County is in the greater Richmond region.
Alison Cutler is a National Real Time Reporter for the Southeast at McClatchy. She graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and previously worked for The News Leader in Staunton, VA, a branch of USAToday.
