Scratcher ticket yields highest prize available
Hollister – When Hollister resident Maria Robles bought a California Lottery Scratcher ticket earlier this month she didn’t expect it to be worth the paper it was printed on.
But when Robles, 44, took home the ticket – purchased at a local grocery store in Hollister – and begin to scratch it off, she immediately saw that she had a winner. At first she thought it was $10, but a little more scratching soon revealed that she had won $10,000. Robles, married with four kids living at home, was surprised and ecstatic, jumping around her home as her 8-year-old son tried to calm her.
” ‘Oh my God,’ I started yelling,” Robles recalled. “My whole body was wobbling, like when you open gelatin. That’s how I felt. My legs were really wobbling.”
In addition to their 8-year-old, Robles and her husband have a 2-year-old daughter, a 14-year-old son and a 18-year-old daughter, all living at home.
The $10,000 will help the couple cover the cost of some of their daughter’s college expenses, pay for some house improvements and pay off some debt.
Robles returned to Safeway, where she was told that she would have to get the ticket to California Lottery headquarters in Sacramento to claim her winnings. Rather than trust the U.S. Postal Service, Robles drove to the state capitol the next day. She said that lottery employees told her that she will receive a check – minus $2,500 in federal income tax – within the next two months.
