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Retired soup maker celebrates $150,000 Powerball win with a Bloomin' Onion

North Carolina – Paul Jackson of Clio, South Carolina said he plans to celebrate his $150,000 Powerball prize with some good food.

“The first thing I’m going to do is take my family to dinner,” Jackson said. “We’ll head to Outback and get some steaks and a Bloomin’ Onion.”

The retired Campbell’s Tomato Soup maker lives near the border of North Carolina and enjoys getting his Powerball tickets at the Wagram Food Mart on North Main Street in Wagram in Scotland County. On Saturday, Aug. 10 he bought a $3 Power Play ticket for that night’s drawing. He forgot about the ticket until he went back to the store a week later.

“The first thing they asked when I walked in was if I had played the Powerball,” Jackson said. “They said someone bought a winning ticket worth $150,000. I figured I’d better check my ticket after I heard that.”

He went straight home and pulled the numbers up on the lottery’s website.

“I had a feeling I’d won,” Jackson said, “even before I checked the numbers. When I saw how much it was, I was in shock.”

He claimed the prize Tuesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required state and federal tax withholdings, he took home $106,126. In addition to dinner, Jackson plans to use some of the money to pay bills.

His ticket matched numbers on four of the white balls and the Powerball to win $50,000. It tripled when the 3X multiplier was drawn. The ticket beat odds of one in 913,129. The jackpot for Wednesday’s Powerball drawing is $40 million or $28.6 million cash.

Ticket sales from draw games like Powerball make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $700 million a year for education. For details on how lottery funds made a difference in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties last year, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website.