Park City, IL – The Illinois Lottery has been part of Linda Tanner’s weekend family tradition for years. Every weekend during the winter, the Tanners go bowling together and Linda always buys a Lottery ticket while at the lanes. Throughout the years, the most that Linda won while taking a break from rolling strikes was $100 from one of her favorite instant tickets. But after recently playing a Winter Winfall instant game, Linda won $100,000 on the spot.

“As I sat down to scratch off my ticket,” Linda recalls, “my eyes played tricks on me – I though that I’d won $100. I got really excited because my oldest son had won $450 playing the Lottery a few weeks earlier.” Competitive both in and out of the bowling alley, Linda couldn’t wait to tell Jason, the $450 winner, about her own win so that she could “gloat a little.” Because her son wasn’t present at the bowling lane that day, Linda put away the ticket and planned to call him later in the afternoon.

“After I got home, I picked up the phone to call Jason,” Linda said. But when the mother of four pulled out her ticket, she noticed that she had not won $100, but $100,000. “My heart just fell to my feet,” Linda said. “I called Jason and told him to hurry over because I had something important to tell him.”

After her son arrived, Linda also showed the ticket to her husband. “We were all in total disbelief,” Linda said.

Linda plans on using her winnings to pay off bills and to travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands for a weeklong getaway with her girlfriends. Her newfound money will also come in handy if Linda and her teammates win her bowling league, which sends its champion on a trip to Las Vegas. Although the win initially surprised her, Linda says, “I’ve always thought that I would win someday. You just can’t give up. I never did."

Bertrand Bowling Lanes, located at 2616 Washington Street in Waukegan, Ill., will receive a bonus of 1 percent of the total prize, or $1,000, for selling the winning ticket.