A 62-year-old man was watching the news the morning after a recent Powerball drawing when he realized he might now retire earlier than he thought.
“They showed the winning Powerball numbers from the night before,” Norman Doerr of Woobley told Michigan Lottery officials. “I recognized the numbers as soon as they appeared on the screen and knew I was a big winner!”
According to a Nov. 4 press release, the numbers were easy to recognize because he had used the same two sets of Powerball numbers for about eight years.
“I had to pause the TV and go over the numbers a few times to make sure I didn’t make a mistake,” the Huron County man said in the release.
But he was right—the five white balls drawn in the Oct. 19 drawing were his numbers, 06-08-15-27-42.
That meant Doerr won the $1 million Powerball prize, officials said.
“Winning is a great feeling that will allow me to retire earlier than I planned,” he told lottery officials.
Doerr bought his winning ticket at Fast Freddie’s in Uble, about 110 miles north of Detroit.
The only number he was missing was red Powerball, which would have netted him a $508 million jackpot. No one has claimed the Powerball jackpot since Aug. 3, when someone in Pennsylvania won $206.9 million.
The next Powerball drawing will take place on Saturday, November 5th with a lottery jackpot estimated at $1.5 billion. If someone wins the pot, officials said, “it would be the second-largest Powerball jackpot ever won and the third-largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history.”
The the biggest Powerball jackpot ever The $1.586 billion ever won was claimed by three winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in 2016, according to McClatchy News.