SACRAMENTO – An Elk Grove woman was napping on Sunday when something strange happened. She woke up to a news bulletin announcing that a winning MEGA Millions ticket worth more than $368,000 was sold at her neighborhood Bel Air Market. She woke up, looked at the TV, recognized the store and the winning numbers and then went back to sleep.
As Karen Hofer explained today when she came forward to claim her prize, “When I woke up again, I remembered that and thought, ‘It must have been a dream,’ but it was too real to be a dream. So I got up and checked the numbers and I realized I had won!”
It doesn’t sound too strange, except that the channel she was watching doesn’t carry news, and certainly not local news. So was it a dream? “I guess I’ll never know,” said Hofer.
The new winner said she bought her ticket at the Bel Air Market on Elk Grove Boulevard like she always does choosing the same numbers each week.
What does Hofer plan to do with her prize? “I’ll help a few people out and save most of it for retirement, but I am really excited because now I can get a new refrigerator!”
More than 95 cents of every Lottery dollar is returned to the community in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retail commissions. The California Lottery contributes at least 34 cents of every dollar that players spend on Lottery products to public education and returns more than 50 percent of sales to players in the form of prizes. Since its inception in 1985, the Lottery has contributed more than $20 billion to California schools out of total sales of nearly $55 billion. Retailers benefit too, earning $3.5 billion in compensation since 1985.