Winning Lottery Ticket Worth $100,000 Pulled From Trash

(INDIANAPOLIS) -- The Hoosier Lottery has awarded a $100,000 prize to a woman who plucked the ticket out of a wastebasket.

"If I drop $100,000 in the street and walk away and the next person picks it up, it's their money," said lottery security director Ellen Corcella.

The lottery paid the winnings, minus taxes, to Kerry Jeremiah, a Shelbyville woman who took the "Hold 'em Poker" ticket to the lottery's Indianapolis headquarters Feb. 10.

Two other people bought the scratch-off ticket Feb. 8 at the Chaperrel Cafe in Shelbyville, Corcella said.

They asked a store clerk to check whether they had a $40 winner, Corcella said. She said the clerk did not check for any other amounts.

Told the ticket wasn't a winner, the buyers threw it in a store wastebasket.

Jeremiah saw the ticket and asked for it, saying she would use it to enter the lottery's second-chance consolation prize, Corcella said.

"They handed it to her and said, with their blessings, take it," said Corcella.

No one had appealed the lottery's decision as of Wednesday.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)