Dubuque County Man Scratches Off $10,000 Lottery Prize
Carey Ahlers Claims Big Prize in 'Ruby Red Crossword' Game
To download image, right click on image, then navigate to 'Save Picture As' to save this file to your computer.
CLIVE, Iowa — A Dubuque County man says a scratch ticket he almost didn't buy turned into a $10,000 lottery win.
Carey Ahlers, 61, of Worthington, won the big prize playing the Iowa Lottery's "Ruby Red Crossword" scratch game. He stopped at Casey's, 1402 Ninth St. SE in Dyersville, and noticed there was just one ticket left for that game in the store's ticket display.
"They had one last ticket," Ahlers said on Thursday as he claimed his prize at the lottery's Cedar Rapids regiona loffice. "I usually don't buy it because they're never really winners, but I bought it anyway."
In the game, players try to complete words with a given set of letters. The more words completed, the larger the prize. Ahlers scratched his ticket in his vehicle and thought he'd won $150 until he stopped at another store to scan his ticket on the self-checker.
"I scanned it there and saw a bunch of zeros and thought, 'Oh, this isn't right," he said.
He then asked a store employee to check it on the lottery terminal, and that confirmed his big win. He said he's planning to use his winnings to pay bills and take a family trip to Las Vegas.
Ruby Red Crossword is a $30 scratch game that features 16 top prizes of $300,000, 47 prizes of $10,000 and overall odds of 1 in 2.29. For more information about this game, and the number of prizes still available, visit www.ialottery.com.
Return to top↑