Husband stops at Spokane Safeway to pick up lottery tickets and wins $100,000 after winning $20,000 from a ticket bought at same store years earlier

Olympia, Wash. (April 5, 2021) – Pour a cup of coffee, grab the newspaper, buy a few lottery tickets, check yesterday’s tickets, repeat. This simple daily routine is how retiree Henry Dohler ended up with a winning lottery ticket at the Shadle Park Safeway in Spokane, not once… but twice. Back in 2010, Henry won $20,000 from a Scratch ticket he bought there and now he revisited the same Safeway and redeemed a free ticket prize to get a Hit 5 ticket that turned out to be a $100,000 winner.

“On Tuesday, I checked the tickets I had bought Monday and I won a free ticket,” said Henry. “On Wednesday, I bought my usual tickets and got my free one too. The next day I checked them and saw I didn’t win anything, but then I remembered I had the free ticket, so I made sure to check it against the numbers in the paper.”

That free ticket ended up making Henry and his wife, Gloria, $100,000 richer.

“It’s like the saying goes, sometimes the best things in life are free. I had to check the ticket three times to make sure that I won,” Henry said. “I just couldn’t believe it. I actually felt myself getting flushed like my temperature was rising… but for a good reason.”

Henry, a retiree from Western States Equipment, where he sold Caterpillar equipment parts for 46 years, says that if he wasn’t 76, he might go out and buy his dream car, a 1963 Corvette Split-Window. “I can dream,” he said. Instead, he and Gloria likely will use some of the extra money to plan a trip to the East Coast so they can visit family for a few weeks.

Hit 5 is a daily drawing game from Washington’s Lottery. Tickets cost $1 each, with the winning Cashpot starting at $100,000 and increasing until someone wins. Henry’s winning ticket was purchased at the Safeway located at 2507 W Wellesley Ave in Spokane.

About Washington’s Lottery: Since 1982, Washington’s Lottery has generated more than $4.5 billion to support important state programs including the Washington Opportunity Pathways Account, which provides grants to help college students statewide achieve their higher education dreams, and supports early childhood education learning programs. The state’s Lottery offers consumers several types of games, including Mega Millions, Powerball, Lotto, Hit 5, Match 4, Pick 3, Daily Keno and Scratch. For more information, visit www.walottery.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @walottery.

Keep it fun. Know your limit. Washington’s Lottery is an advocate for responsible gaming and collaborates with the Evergreen Council for Problem Gambling to provide resources for those in need. More information is available at www.walottery.com/Responsibility.

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