SACRAMENTO – Michael Rule doesn’t necessarily think of himself as lucky. In fact, up until now, all he had ever won was a bike when he was a kid. That is until October 30th when his MEGA Millions ticket netted him a $251,639 prize. This prize couldn’t have come at a better time as Rule, a Campbell’s Soup machinist, recently found out the Sacramento-based plant will be closing this summer and he’ll be losing his longtime job.
Rule only buys Lottery tickets once a week, but he buys them for both MEGA Millions and SuperLotto Plus® draws, so when he went in to buy the next batch of tickets, the clerk asked him, “Have you checked your tickets from last week yet?” He hadn’t, and didn’t think much of it, but the clerk was adamant, so he went to his car and got the other batch of tickets. In that batch was the ticket that matched five numbers and was the big winner. He was elated! “I went home and checked the numbers one more time, and then I told my wife and daughter, but they thought I had only matched four numbers,” he explained. “I had to point out it was five and worth $250,000, and then all H-E-double L broke loose.”
Considering he’ll lose his job this summer, Rule plans to pay off some bills and invest the rest of his prize.
Rule bought his ticket at A1 Mart, which is located at 2550 West El Camino #1 in Sacramento. His ticket successfully matched the numbers 29, 5, 12, 56 and 18, missing only the Mega number of 38. His combination of numbers were his own, made up of family birthdates and ages.
