2022-06-27 14:34:36.227

If not for a last-minute decision, the Missouri Lottery’s newest millionaire would have missed his big-winning ticket.

While purchasing Scratchers tickets at Cedar Hill Liquors, 8203 Center Drive in Cedar Hill, the player was deciding exactly which tickets to buy. He first asked for a few $10 tickets, but changed his mind and decided to go with $5 tickets instead – before ultimately deciding to do a little of both.

“I said, ‘Actually, I want one of the $10 ones,’” the winner explained. “And he gave me [the winning ticket] back.”

The $10 ticket the clerk returned to the player turned out to be the second $1 million top-prize-winner in the Missouri Lottery’s “Stacks of Cash” game, as the player discovered when scratching the ticket later and seeing he had matched one of his numbers to one of the winning numbers.

“I knew I won something,” he said. “Then I scratched it off, and I saw that I won the $1 million. I was like, ‘Whoa!’”

Players in Jefferson County won more than $38.9 in Missouri Lottery players in the last fiscal year. The county’s retailers received more than $3.9 million in commissions and bonuses, and an additional $13.5 million in Lottery proceeds went to educational programs in the county. A detailed list of what programs benefitted in Jefferson County or any county is available at MOLottery.com.