$80,000 lottery ticket rescued from the trash

June 25 (UPI) — A Kentucky woman rescued an unscratched lottery ticket from the trash and discovered it was an $80,000 winner.

Shepherdsville resident Pamela Howard-Thorton told Kentucky Lottery officials the $5 Flamingo Bingo scratch-off ticket had caught her eye before, but she had never bought one until her recent visit to a Speedway in Lebanon Junction.

“I just had this premonition — go get that ticket,” the player recalled.

She used $200 in winnings from another ticket to buy four Flamingo Bingo games.

“They laid on the counter all day long. I had forgotten about them so at about 11:30 that night I decided to play them,” Howard-Thorton recalled. “The first three were not winners so I put them in the trash. Then I was like, ‘Where’s my fourth ticket?’ I looked in the trash and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I threw it away.'”

The ticket she rescued from the trash turned out to be an $80,000 winner.

“I scanned it, of course, I started crying, and I started shouting and screaming,” she said. “I immediately called my daughter and my mom. My mom has always said she would give anything if she could just see me hit a big ticket before something happens to her. When I called her the night I won, she was so thankful and happy for me.”