Woman Wins Scratch-Off Design Contest, Then Jackpot
Last summer, the Iowa Lottery held a contest to design a scratch-off game ticket.
A Webster City woman who designed the ticket not only won the contest, she hit the jackpot in the very scratch-off card game that bears her design.
Alice Hayes just can’t help it. She has the golden touch.
“It’s got to be luck or something,” Hayes said.
“She’s worth $12,000, so I’m going to hold the door for her,” said husband Gary Hayes.
Hayes heard about the contest last summer and decided to enter.
“So, I ran up to my grandson, got his colored pencils, came down, thought of a headline,” Hayes said.
In less than three late-night hours, she had sketched the concept for the Dream’n of Dollars scratch-off card game.
Within weeks, she found out she won $3,000, and her artwork would be seen in Iowa Lottery machines statewide.
“I made a deal with Hy-Vee to buy the first 100 tickets from our local Hy-Vee store, and I bought them and handed them out to our friends,” Gary Hayes said.
Hayes bought a ticket that revealed an amazing surprise.
“I bought this yesterday at a gas station,” she said. “‘Oh, it’s 12.’ And then I kept scratching and there was more zeroes … $12,000.
Hayes said she bought more of these tickets than other scratch-offs because it’s her design.
She’s dreaming of ways to spend her second prize from a single game.
“Well, I’d like to have a new John Deere tractor,” her husband said.
This win is all Alice’s.
“I’m just lucky, I guess. That’s what everybody’s told me,” she said.