Trucker who ‘never’ buys scratch-offs tries luck on ticket. It leaves him frozen

Hunger got the best of a 26-year-old Iowa man, who stopped at a grocery store to purchase food.

And with that purchase, he went out of his comfort zone when he bought an Iowa Lottery scratch-off ticket.

“To be honest, I never buy scratch-off tickets,” Marco Gonzalez-Saurez told lottery officials in a June 30 news release. “Something just said, ‘Hey, why don’t I just buy one.’”

He picked the “Feeling Lucky?” scratch-off ticket from a Hy-Vee in Windsor Heights, then went home to see if he won.

What he saw — a $150,000 windfall — left him in disbelief

“I just kind of froze, like, ‘No way!’” Gonzalez-Suarez told lottery officials. “Honestly, I didn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real.”

It wasn’t until he scanned the ticket on the lottery app that his win began to feel real, he said.

Now, the truck driver from West Des Moines hopes to use the money toward “a fun purchase or two” and invest the rest.

The “Feeling Lucky?” game costs $10 to play. Odds of winning the $150,000 jackpot prize are 1 in 144,850.

Windsor Heights is a western suburb of Des Moines.