*Hot dang! Talk about a bit of good news coming out of a bad situation!
When Tiffany Hatfield’s husband called her from Hawaii after seeing the ravage Hurricane Irma was causing in their hometown near Orlando, Florida, he told her to take their three daughters and leave.
She drove all night. But on the way to her destination — a friend’s house in Virginia, they got out of the car to stretch. Hatfield, 28, stopped in a convenience store “in the middle of nowhere” and decided to buy two $5 lottery scratch-off tickets.
She scratched 10 blocks, each at $1,000.
?I thought maybe I was looking at it wrong so I had my oldest daughter look at it,? Hatfield said. ?She started screaming and we all started screaming.?
Hatfield had moved to Florida from Connecticut last June to be closer to family members while her husband, a Navy man, was deployed.
The North Carolina Education Lottery offices were closed over the weekend, so Hatfield continued on her trip.
?I was so scared I was going to lose that ticket,? she said. ?I kept it in my wallet right next to me and checked it on every minute.?
The family ended up going to a lottery office in Greenville, NC on their way back home to Florida; where Hatfield accepted a check for $6,951, after federal and state taxes were deducted, according to what a North Carolina Education Lottery spokeswoman told ABC News.
Hatfield was lucky on two fronts. She won the lottery, and her home only sustained minimum damages.
She says she will use the money to redecorate.
