On March 11, Nick Slatten couldn't believe his luck when he found out he won $1,178,746 on a Tennessee lottery ticket. "I was stunned. I couldn't believe it," he said. "I can't express it. It was something else."
And then he couldn't believe his terrible luck when, on the same day, he lost his winning ticket after foolishly running errands with it.
From TNLottery:
Slatten rushed to his fiancée Michelle's work in Sparta to tell her about the good fortune. After sharing the news, he continued to run errands, which included taking his brother to buy a car part at O'Reilly's and then a stop for lunch.
It was about an hour later, Slatten said, when he realized he didn't have the ticket anymore. "I couldn't find it anywhere," he said.
He hadn't yet signed the ticket, which means anyone who found it could cash it in. To make matters worse, it was a windy day, so the lost ticket could have been blowing farther and farther away from anywhere he'd visited that day. Panicked, he retraced his steps, and by the time he got to O'Reilly's about an hour into his search, he miraculously saw the ticket on the ground "right next to the driver's side-door of another vehicle," Slatten said. "It's a million-dollar ticket, and someone stepped right over it."
Slatten now hopes that this financial jackpot will allow him to buy a house, better cars, and live with "not a whole lot of worries."
Image by DepositPhotos
