Clark Man Still Celebrating $50K Lottery Win

Clark, NJ - Jacek Polchlopek still can’t believe he decided to play the lottery.

The 39-year-old Clark man doesn’t gamble and said he bought a lottery ticket “maybe once before, like 10 years ago.”

But hey, the Powerball had reached to a dizzying $1.6 billion, and he figured his odds were as good as anybody’s.

So you can imagine his surprise when he actually won. Polchlopek bought a single ticket from the Shell gas station on St. Georges Avenue in Rahway, and his numbers matched the third-prize $50,000 Powerball.

Except he didn’t even bother to check them.

“I bought the ticket and sent an iPhone photo of it to my brother, with a text that said something like, ‘Ha ha, I’m never going to work again.’ Then I sort of forgot about it. I didn’t even check the lottery drawing that night; I was asleep,” Polchlopek told Patch. “I was at the Shop-Rite a few days later and my brother calls me. He said, ’Do you know you won? Get out of the god***** Shop-Rite right now and go claim it!’”

Now, Polchlopek can only laugh and count his good fortune. The winnings aren’t enough to quit his job in the trucking business, he said, but it’s enough to pay off his Harley, take a little vacation and maybe even share some with his brother.

“This isn’t life-changing, but it has been a beautiful gift,” he told Patch.

Photos: Jacek Polchlopek, who wanted female readers to know he is single and goes to the gym a lot, with employees at the Shell station in Rahway.