“My wife still thinks I’m joking,” he told lottery officials.
Virginia Lottery
As Charles Smith’s wife got ready for an out-of-state trip, he cracked a foretelling joke.
“I’ll call you when I win the lottery,” he told her, according to Virginia lottery officials.
“Oh, right!” Smith’s wife said with a laugh, he told lottery officials.
Days later, when Smith called her back with a $227,037 prize in hand, she refused to believe it.
“Of course, she thought I was joking,” Smith told lottery officials.
Smith, who lives in Newport, used his family’s birthdays for his picks and played the Cash 5 with EZ Match game, winning the jackpot in the July 17 lottery, according to officials.
Smith said he didn’t have any plans for his winnings yet, other than to pay off some bills, lottery officials said.
“My wife still thinks I’m joking,” he told lottery officials when he went to pick up his win.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 749,398, according to the Virginia Lottery.
Newport is about 50 miles west of Roanoke.
Alison Cutler is a National Real Time Reporter for the Southeast at McClatchy. She graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and previously worked for The News Leader in Staunton, VA, a branch of USAToday.
