A woman wins the lottery twice after trying her luck again at the exact right moment. In a wonderful twist of fate, Gina Short won the North Carolina Education Lottery twice in less than three months.
Short said her total prize fund of $1.25 million, before taxes, will help pay for her chemotherapy treatments, People Magazine reports. Gina said she is in “disbelief” after beating the odds of 1 in 2.7 million to win the top All or Nothing Prize on April 29.
“We’re still in disbelief mode,” she said via a North Carolina Lottery Commission press statement. “With what Gina’s been going through this helps,” her husband Len Short added. “We’ll use the money for Gina. She’s the priority. She’s number one.”
Earning the title as the woman who wins the lottery twice, it began after she first won $1 million in the Ultimate Millions second-chance drawing in February. She asked her husband, Len Short, to buy a ticket because she was feeling lucky. But when they realized they won, at first the couple couldn’t believe it.
“We checked the same ticket six or seven times because we thought we misread it,” Gina Short stated. The lottery winner is currently undergoing chemotherapy and Len said the money, which will come out to $173,125 after taxes, will go toward the treatments, CNN reported.
Mecklenburg County breast cancer patient wins $1 million! Her reaction is priceless.https://t.co/3154BxER3c pic.twitter.com/V3e33OSuHf
— NC Education Lottery (@nclottery) February 15, 2016
“If you would have told me, in a million years I still wouldn’t have believed you,” Short stated. “I would have said, ‘No you’ve got the wrong girl,’ because that’s what I said to them when they told me I had cancer, ‘No you’ve got the wrong girl.'”
Short decided to receive the windfall as a lump sum payment of $415,500, which she said would help her to “truly live.” Less than three months later, She had a feeling she’d “get lucky” again, and urged her husband buy an All or Nothing draw ticket at a Publix grocery store in Cornelius. Despite the 1 in 2.7 million odds, Short won the top $250,000 prize on April 29.
Len Short said the wins were not something he can put into words. “For us to have the good fortune of winning not just one big prize but two, we are just very thankful for that,” he added.
Perez Hilton said the woman who wins the lottery twice fell to the floor in shock when she walked into the lottery’s Charlotte regional office and was surprised with the news that she won. Confetti rained down on her and her husband. “I have a second chance,” the lottery winner stated.
