Couple on milk run leads to $6M lottery prize at Oakland Safeway
FILE ART (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
OAKLAND, Calif. - Thank goodness she was out of milk.
A trip to the Safeway store on Redwood Road because Peggy Rike and her husband were out of milk led to be win $6 million from the California Lottery.
“I usually don’t go there,” Rike told the lottery officials in a statement. ”But I decided to get more tickets.”
Everything about Rike’s win was pretty unusual for her. She traditionally sticks to his system: She bops around to 12 stores in Oakland and San Leandro during the week to buy her Scratchers tickets. On any given day, she’ll stop at three or four stores, the lottery reported. She likes to spread the potential for luck around.
“I won’t buy them all at one spot,” Rike told lottery officials, adding that she is a strong believer that buying tickets at multiple locations is the luckiest way to go.
Recently, she ditched her tradition. Her husband asked her to come along for the ride to pick up some extra milk. And she bought a $10 Set for Life ticket, which has a 1 in 3 million chance of winning, lottery data shows.
The word “LIFE” appeared on one of the 20 boxes on the ticket. And she’s now one of four people to have won that top $6 million prize. Rike now has the option of taking the lump sum of nearly $3.5 million or $20,000 monthly payments over the next 25 years.
“It was waiting for me!” Rike told lottery officials. “I thought the [Check-A-Ticket] machine was broken (when she scanned her ticket)! I don’t know that it has sunk in.”
Rike now has the option of taking her $6 million before federal taxes spread out in $20,000 monthly payments over the next 25 years. Or she can take the lump-sum cash option of $3,480,000.
California’s latest millionaire insists she’s not going to change her Lottery-buying routine except that she’s going to include the Safeway on Redwood Road into her routine.
As for what she plans to do with her newfound fortune, it’s pretty simple. “I’ll go gambling and [my husband] will buy his books. That’s our entertainment!”