$1.5B lottery jackpot sold in Simpsonville, S.C.
SIMPSONVILLE, S.C. — C.J. Patel stood outside KC Mart No. 7 in Simpsonville and told a crowd of locals and media that the store “is always lucky to me.”
He owns the store in a suburban section of Simpsonville that borders on rural. But for a Mega Millions ticket holder, it’s also a lucky store for them. Patel’s store sold the winning ticket in Tuesday night’s $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
The store sold the lucky ticket with the numbers 5, 28, 62, 65,70 and the mega number 5.
State lottery officials announced Wednesday that the winning ticket was sold at KC Mart No. 7 at 303 Lee Vaughn Road in Simpsonville. The winner has 180 days to collect the jackpot.
The person or persons with the lucky numbers has yet to come forward and has the option to remain anonymous, said Tony Cooper, chief operating officer of the S.C. Education Lottery.
But Cooper described reaction to the winning ticket being sold in South Carolina with a word not found in the dictionary. “Pandomoneous-jolyfication,” he said. It’s not just a win for one or more ticket holders, but for South Carolina as well, Cooper said. The state is set to receive about $70 million stemming from the win.
“It’s a big, big win for South Carolina,” Cooper said.
Those earnings are likely to increase too, Cooper said, as a climbing Powerball lottery is set to be drawn Wednesday night. The jackpot for Powerball had climbed to $620 million by Wednesday afternoon.
Lottery officials are anticipating higher sales of Powerball tickets following the record drawing on Tuesday.
The stakes could also be a boon for Simpsonville, Mayor Janice Curtis said.
The winner doesn’t stand much chance of staying anonymous if he or she is local, Curtis said.
“Everyone knows your business and what they don’t know they make up along the way,” she said.
The store became a gathering spot for local and national media as well as customers hoping to cash in on the store’s success. About two dozen media outlets sent crews to cover Wednesday’s news conference, and a crew from NBC News arrived about 1.5 hours after the news conference started.
Customers, shocked and giddy about the community’s sudden notoriety, lined up to buy tickets for the next Mega Millions and for the growing Powerball pot.
Rolfe Hughes, a Simpsonville resident, said he’s driven passed the station a “million times,” but he’d never bought a lottery ticket. On Wednesday, that changed.
He bought seven Powerball tickets, one for each member of his family. He won an umbrella already after spinning a wheel set up by lottery officials at KC Mart. And when he found out the KC Mart’s full name is KC Mart No. 7, he’s starting to think it could be his lucky day too.