A Williamsburg woman jokes that her tongue hurts from biting it as she struggled to keep quiet about winning a lottery prize of $25,000 a year for life.
Sheri Wetjen says she can’t believe people didn’t read it in her face, but somehow, she and her husband managed to keep the news to themselves until she claimed her Lucky for Life® prize today at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive.
Wetjen, 67, a long-time clerk at the Williamsburg Post Office, is Iowa’s 18th big winner in Lucky for Life since it debuted here in January 2016. Her easy-pick ticket matched the first five numbers but missed the Lucky Ball in Thursday’s drawing to win the game’s second prize of $25,000 a year for life.
Wetjen purchased her winning ticket at Casey’s, 602 S. Highland St. in Williamsburg.
She says she saw details posted Friday morning by the Iowa Lottery that there had been a winner of $25,000 for life at the store where she bought her ticket. She remembered that the ticket was in her car at work and went out to check it on her phone.
Then came the task of getting her husband, Garth, to believe that she’d won big.
Sheri Wetjen says she sent him a text to share the news and his response was: “Quit joking with me!”
They went back and forth a few times until she sent him photographic evidence. Sheri says she took a screenshot of the ticket results on her phone and sent it to him. She says then he had to believe her!
The winning numbers in Thursday’s drawing were 1-7-20-21-38 and Lucky Ball 15. Casey’s will receive a $500 bonus from the lottery for selling the winning ticket.
Sheri Wetjen also won a $50,000 prize in a lottery scratch game in June 2020, but that was during the COVID-19 public health emergency when lottery prizes were claimed curbside from the car, by mail or by dropbox. She says she enjoyed having the full prize-claim experience this time around!
Sheri chose to claim her prize in the lump-sum amount of $390,000. She says that she and Garth have definite plans for the winnings: They’ll give some, because everybody should, and they’ll live some, taking the grandkids on vacation.
But first, they were figuring out how to tell their adult children and their local community that Sheri had won big. She says it’s a small town, so word will spread!
Hi, Ashley. The Iowa Lottery has a mobile app you can download onto your smartphone or mobile device and use it to scan your ticket results. It's a really easy process and you can use the app to check your tickets from wherever you are. Or, you can check your ticket on a self-checker at a lottery retailer or give it to a clerk at a lottery terminal to check the results. Here is a direct link to information about our mobile app so you can see all the details: https://www.ialottery.com/Pages/Games/MobileApp.aspx
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | March 20, 2023 at 09:29 AM
I need help figuring out if I am a winner I have had so many sleepless nights trying to find answers by myself
Posted by: Ashley Gause | March 17, 2023 at 07:51 PM