WOODWARD WOMAN CELEBRATES NEW YEAR
WITH $25,000 LOTTERY PRIZE

To download digital audio files of this story, right click here, then navigate to "Save Target As" to save this file to your computer.

For media-ready jpeg image of Elizabeth Twohig click here.

Elizabeth Twohig Wins Top Prize Playing "Wild Bingo" Scratch Game

DES MOINES, Iowa – A Woodward woman said it was a shocking coincidence when she won a $25,000 lottery prize!

Elizabeth Twohig, 52, sent her son John Jr. to a small local retailer to pick up some "Wild Bingo" scratch tickets. When he got there on New Year's Eve, however, the store was closed, so he ended up buying the tickets from a different retailer.

"The first one I opened was the $25,000 winner!" Twohig said. She and her family thought it was a strange coincidence they had to buy the tickets at a different retailer and ended up with the top prize.

Twohig said her husband John didn't know how to react when she discovered the win.

"I guess I went white and started shaking! He said, 'What's wrong?' And I said, 'We just won $25,000!'" Twohig laughed.

Twohig claimed her prize Monday at the Iowa Lottery's headquarters in Des Moines. She bought her winning ticket at Casey's, 906 S. Main St. in Woodward.

Twohig said she plans to use her winnings to pay bills. She also said she plans to continue playing.

"Just keep playing! You never know!" she added.

Twohig currently works for Burger King in Perry.

Wild Bingo is a $2 scratch game. Players try to match any complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line, four corners, or an "X" pattern on one of the four Bingo cards to win the corresponding prize in the prize arrow that points to their card. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game are 1 in 3.57.

Two top prizes of $25,000 have yet to be claimed in Wild Bingo, along with five prizes of $2,500, as well as 16 prizes of $500 and more than 85 prizes of $150 and $250.

Since the Iowa Lottery's inception in 1985, more than $2.4 billion has been awarded in prizes and more than $1.2 billion has been raised for state programs.