MILLINOCKET, Maine — A Christmas present Lesie Bragdon bought for herself turned into a much bigger present — a $500,000 present.
“I had a rough Christmas, so I decided to buy myself a present,” Bragdon said Friday of the five $20 money multiplier scratch off lottery tickets she purchased Tuesday at the Save-A-Lot in town. “I’m not a scratch ticket player.”
“I brought them home and put them on the sideboard while I cooked dinner and shoveled the driveway,” she said.
After returning inside, Bragdon got a call from her sister, Debbie, who called to complain about her car breaking down, and decided to scratch the tickets while listening.
“I scratched the first one and won $20. The second one was a loser,” Bragdon said. “I started scratching the third one and saw that I had two 33s. I thought maybe it was a $20 or maybe a $50 winner.”
She took a break because she had to stir something on the stove, but soon after learned she was a $500,000 winner.
“I went, ‘Oh, no,’” Bragdon recalled. “I looked at it again and said, ‘Oh my God.’ I said, ‘Debbie,’ but she didn’t hear me. I said ‘Debbie’ again, and then I screamed her name. She said, ‘I’m trying to tell you something.’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go. I just won half a million dollars’ and then hung up on her.”
“I was in shock. I lost all feeling,” Bragdon said.
Her sons, Matthew and Mike, and Mike’s friend came running into the room, and found Bragdon bent over with a red face.
“My son said, ‘Mom, do we need to call someone?,” she said. “I said, ‘No’ and then told them I won $500,000.”
Everyone in the family is extremely happy, even though some, including her dad and sister, needed to see the winning ticket firsthand to believe.
“She ended up coming right over,” Bragdon said of her sister.
Bragdon and her husband Mike own Bragdon Energy, a fuel delivery businesses.
“I am going to invest it in my company,” Bragdon said of her winnings.