Honest convenience store clerk returns winning lottery ticket
Published: June 25, 2005
Leslee Hobson isn’t just lucky when it comes to lottery tickets. She is lucky she buys her coffee from John Martin each morning.
Hobson brought three Powerball tickets into the Circle K convenience store in Stayton on May 29.
Martin, a clerk at the store, went through the tickets and returned her winnings of $3. One of the tickets, however, couldn’t be processed.
“Something came up on the screen on the Lottery machine I’d never seen before,” Martin said. “It said, ‘This is not a ticket.’”
Hobson left with her coffee and Martin tossed the tickets, but the message stayed on the lottery machine. When Martin looked closer, he saw that the prize had to be picked up at the Lottery office.
He retrieved the ticket and checked the numbers. Hobson had won $100,000.
Not knowing where to find her, but knowing she came into the Circle K each morning, he pocketed the ticket and waited for the next day when Hobson came in.
Hobson was in skeptical at first: “I told him, ‘This is Memorial Day, not April Fool’s Day. I don’t believe you.’”
To Martin, keeping the ticket would have been the same as stealing.
“It wouldn’t have been worth the $100,000 to me,” he said. “I would have had to live with it. That would have made the money not worth anything.”
Hobson gave Martin a $200 tip after he returned her lottery ticket.
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