Fremont Friends Win $70,000 Playing Nebraska Pick 5
Curtis Smith and Ryan Bonsack of Fremont won $70,000 playing Nebraska Pick 5 from the Nebraska Lottery.
The winning ticket was purchased at Love’s Travel Stop #631 at 26120 E Meigs St. in Valley. The ticket contained one quick pick play for the September 21 drawing which matched the winning numbers 06, 11, 24, 34 and 35.
Smith and Bonsack are friends and have been pooling their tickets for the past year and a half. They each buy one ticket good for thirty days’ worth of drawings.
They were heading to golf league when Bonsack found out that a winning ticket had been sold at Love’s. He remembered he’d bought a ticket there and joked with Smith that he had the winning ticket.
Smith remembered that he’d also bought a ticket at Love’s he’d left it in the glovebox of his pickup while they went to play golf. When they came back, they checked their numbers with a flashlight.
“He got so pale,” Bonsack said of Smith. “We just started screaming. I was worried we might have woke up the whole neighborhood.”
The ticket got packed away in a Band-Aid box until they had a chance to come to Lincoln to claim their prize on Friday, September 24.
Bonsack said he’s going to pay some bills with his share and Smith is thinking about taking a trip somewhere.
Nebraska Pick 5 is Nebraska’s unique Lottery game: all the proceeds from Nebraska Pick 5 stay in Nebraska, and all the winning tickets are sold in Nebraska at Nebraska Lottery Lotto game retailers. The odds of winning the Nebraska Pick 5 jackpot, which starts at $50,000 and grows by $4,000 each drawing that is not won, are 1 in 501,942 while the overall odds of winning a prize in the game, which has drawings seven nights a week, are 1 in 8.
Published on 09/24/2021