Richard Beare, of Charlotte, said he “rarely” plays the lottery but won a $250,000 prize — after he’d recently found out he has stage 4 liver cancer.
“I only stopped because my wife asked me to get a Powerball ticket since the jackpot was so high,” he told the North Carolina Education Lottery. Beare was at a QuikTrip store two weeks ago and decided to buy four Carolina Black scratch-offs while he was there. Beare said his fourth scratch-off was the big winner. He said he noticed the ticket had matching numbers, and asked his wife what that meant.“She said it meant I won a prize. I told her, ‘Well, I guess we just won $250,000, then,’” Beare said. “She was in shock and just kept looking back and forth to me and the ticket.”
The lottery stated on its website that Beare claimed his prize on Monday in Raleigh, and after tax withholdings, he received $176,876.“I want to travel while I can still enjoy myself,” he said. “My wife has always wanted to go to Italy, since that’s where her descendants are from. Now I can take her.”
Now he can afford to go to an American hospital.