Louisiana Couple Finds $1.8 Million Lottery Ticket While Cleaning Their Home For The Holidays
One Mandeville, LA, couple now has 1.8 million reasons to be thankful during this holiday season. For Tina and Harold Ehrenberg, Thanksgiving and Christmas just got a little better and they have quite a bit to look forward to for the new year. According to ABC News, the couple had only planned to clean the home for the holidays, but their plans took an interesting, positive turn when they came across Louisiana Lotto lottery ticket they’d purchased months prior.
Apparently, the ticket had been sitting on their nightstand for quite some time, but they hadn’t checked the numbers. Instead of tossing the old lottery ticket in a trash can, they decided to take a look at the winning numbers for the date on the ticket.
To their surprise, the ticket had all of the winning numbers for that particular drawing, which took place on June 6, 2018. Initially, they couldn’t believe their discovery. During a recent news interview, the couple detailed the moment they made the discovery and their reactions to the amazing find.
Harold admitted the shocking moment was “pretty exciting.” “At first I thought that we might have made a mistake, misreading the numbers or the expiration date,” the husband told ABC News. “So we checked it a number of times and sure enough they were the right numbers. It was pretty exciting.”
THEY CLEANED UP: Louisiana couple finds $1.8 million Lotto ticket https://t.co/Hj3xKgIArP pic.twitter.com/js0e3ozBnS
— NBC12 WWBT Richmond (@NBC12) November 21, 2018
Out of pure shock, Tina Ehrenberg admitted she’d “called the winning numbers hotline over and over.” Each time she called, the numbers were the same. Since lottery winnings must be redeemed within 180 days, the couple wanted to get to the lottery office as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, since they found the ticket on a Saturday, they had to wait until the next business day when the office opened.
Harold Ehrenberg admitted the wait was agonizing. “I kept waiting for something to go wrong,” Harold said. But after visiting the lottery office, they finally got the confirmation they needed. He added, “They congratulated us and then it became very real.”
After taxes, the couple walked away with exactly $1,274,313. So, what do they plan to do with their massive windfall? Well, according to Tina, they won’t be doing anything extravagant. In fact, the couple revealed they’ll be putting the funds away for retirement. For Harold, the long walk to the bank is exhilarating enough. “We don’t have any plans to buy anything crazy or go on any big trips,” said Tina. “The most fun is going to be depositing that check!” interjected Harold.
