A Charlotte man forgot to check his ticket for weeks before realizing he’d won $25,000 a year for life playing Lucky For Life from the Michigan Lottery. Shea Nowlan matched all five white balls in the January 20 drawing: 02-10-28-30-44. He bought his winning ticket at ABC Liquor, located at 311 Lansing Street in Charlotte, about 20 miles southwest of Lansing.
Nowlan says he saw that the winning ticket was bought in Charlotte and meant to check his ticket. “I ended up forgetting to check and then several weeks later saw the prize wasn’t claimed, and that’s when I remembered to check my ticket.”
The lucky winner already visited Lottery headquarters to claim his prize. He chose to receive his winnings as a lump sum cash payment of $390,000 instead of the option of $25,000 a year for 20 years or life, whichever is greater. Nowlan says he plans to save his winnings.
Lucky For Life costs $2 per play and gives players a chance to win prizes from $3 up to a lifetime of cash. Players must match all five winning numbers from 1 to 48, plus the Lucky Ball, which ranges from 1 to 18, to win the top prize of $1,000 a day for life.
Lucky For Life drawings are held seven nights per week at 10:38 pm. Players can purchase tickets at any Lottery retailer and online at MichiganLottery.com.
Michigan Lottery players also have a chance to win more than $1.4 billion in this week’s Mega Millions and Powerball drawings. The Mega Millions jackpot for Friday’s drawing is estimated at $560 million, which would be the sixth-largest prize in Mega Millions history if there’s a winner.
The cash option for the huge jackpot is $281.1 million.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot was awarded in October 2018 when a player from South Carolina won $1.537 billion to set a record for the biggest winner on a single lottery ticket.
The current Powerball jackpot for the next drawing on Saturday is estimated at $875 million, with a cash option of $441.9 million. If there’s a winner, it will be the third-biggest Powerball jackpot ever awarded. The largest Powerball jackpot was in November 2022, when one person in Altadena, CA, won a $2.04 billion jackpot, the largest in lottery history.
