When Judy Howard answered her husband’s call Monday morning, he told her he had quit his job.
“I said, ‘Why?’ And then he said, ‘Well, baby, I just won a million dollars,'” Howard, a resident of LaFayette, Ga., said Friday afternoon. “I just hollered, ‘What? Please don’t kid me.'”
Judy and her husband, Ronald, were celebrating his good fortune at the Favorite Market in Rocky Face, Ga., on Friday when they were presented with a $1 million check from the Georgia Lottery.
While Ronald Howard said he was given the rest of the month off from his job at Quantum Textiles in Dalton, Ga., after he scratched a winning ticket in the gas station parking lot, he said he wasn’t sure if he actually would quit.
The LaFayette man was one of three North Georgia residents presented with a large sum from the Georgia Lottery on Friday.
David Mitchell, of Rising Fawn, Ga., won a $500,000 prize, and Gladys Wigley, of Blairsville, Ga., also won $1 million, according to Georgia Lottery officials.
“It’s exciting to have this many in a week,” said Ron Shaver, a Georgia Lottery district manager. “It’s not a normal week.”
In the past, Mitchell, who has been playing the Georgia Lottery since it started, has won smaller amounts.
“I haven’t played a lot like a lot of people have, just occasionally,” he said. “I’ve won a thousand [dollars] several times.”
Last weekend, Mitchell used some of his winnings to play the instant Jumbo Jumbo Bucks and stood at the gas station counter in Fort Oglethorpe and scratched the $500,000 win, he said.
“I was in shock. I didn’t even say anything to anybody in the store,” Mitchell said.
His wife wouldn’t believe that he won until she saw the check, he said.
“There’s no formula,” he said. “It’s all pure luck.”