Linn County woman wins $50,000 lottery prize off scratch game
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Iowa's News Now) — A Linn County woman said she did a double-take after scratching off a $50,000 lottery prize.
I had to look at it a couple times,” Dawn Spencer, of Hiawatha, told officials Thursday as she claimed her “$50,000 Super Crossword” top prize at the lottery’s Cedar Rapids regional office. “I said, ‘There’s no way!’ I had to count the zeros. I think I started crying. It was pretty exciting.
Spencer and her husband, Steve, bought a handful of tickets at Kwik Star, 1800 Blairs Ferry Road NE in Hiawatha. Dawn said Steve knew about the big win before she did because he scanned each ticket with the Iowa Lottery mobile app before she scratched it, but kept the outcome of each ticket to himself.
She said the only inkling of what was to come was his insistence that she play every ticket instead of waiting until later in the day.
“He really wanted (me) to scratch them all,” said Spencer, 62. “I knew it was a little bit of a winner, I just didn’t know it was that big of a winner.”
Spencer claimed the 64th top prize in the game. She said they hadn’t yet decided what they’ll do with the winnings.
“We’re going to put it in the bank for right now and then we’re going to decide this summer what we’re going to do with it,” she said. “Probably a vacation, a good one this time.”
The $50,000 Super Crossword is a $5 scratch game that features 78 top prizes of $50,000 and overall odds of 1 in 3.53. For more information about this game, and the number of prizes still available, visit ialottery.com.
