$1M Powerball Winner Finds Fortune in Trip Home to Minnesota

Yes, you can go home again. And sometimes the payoff is huge. Just ask Shawn Walcheski of Denver, Colorado, who bought a Powerball ticket while visiting family in his native St. Cloud over Thanksgiving weekend. He quickly scanned the ticket, then carelessly crumbled it up and, thinking it was only a $4 winner, put it in his pocket. When he got home in Colorado, he learned it was worth $1 million.

Walcheski didn’t say anything about the Powerball windfall until he surprised his family with a trip home to St. Cloud for Christmas, though. He claimed his prize a few days into the New Year.

Walcheski bought the three-line quick-pick ticket on a whim. He had stopped at Coborn’s in St. Cloud on Nov 26 for some medicine. “I was actually sick,” he told Minnesota Lottery officials. “I had bronchitis, so I told my sister I needed to stop for medicine.

“My total was $13 and change, so I said, ‘Powerball is big, give me three,’ ” he said.

The ticket might well have disappeared entirely. Thinking it wouldn’t buy much, he treated it like a piece of almost worthless paper. “It was in and out of my pocket, on the floor, all over the place,” he said.

Fortunately, the ticket that he crumbled between currency in his shirt pocket — he had lost his wallet — didn’t make it to the landfill before he got an urgent Facebook message from his sister telling him to check the numbers. It had been on the news that someone who purchased a ticket at Coborn’s had won $1 million.

This time, he checked all three lines on the ticket and saw that the first five numbers on the third line were a match, enough for a $1 million prize.

When he made his surprise trip home for Christmas, he played Santa to his family with extra-special gifts to share his fortune.

Minnesota Lottery photo