WASHINGTON — A Virginia father who stopped by a 7-Eleven convenience store to buy his kids some chocolate milk, also bought a scratch-off lottery ticket and wound up winning $1 million.
Dennis Willoughby of Chesterfield County, an area near Virginia's capital city of Richmond, bought the ticket just before Christmas.
He decided to buy the ticket on a whim while he was in the store.
The Virginia Lottery said Willoughby chose a one-time cash option of $640,205, instead of the other option of annual payments over 30 years. Both of those amounts are before taxes, lottery officials said and the cash option is not a tax withholding.
There was still one more unclaimed top-prize winner in the '$1 million Platinum Jackpot game lottery officials said. The odds of winning it are 1 in 1,632,000.
While Willoughby hit it big with his $1 million scratch-off ticket, there's an even bigger lottery prize up for grabs currently through Powerball. Monday's jackpot is at $522 million and could get larger when the numbers are selected. The cash option is $371.5 million.
The chance of winning all that money is minuscule at one in 292.2 million. The odds of winning in general are 1 in 24.9. It's not uncommon to have months go by without a grand prize winner.
The last time someone hit jackpot was Oct. 4 in California, winning $699.8 million. That jackpot was the seventh largest in U.S. lottery history and fifth largest in Powerball history.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
