AFTER SEARCHING FOR FAVORITE TICKET,
CEDAR FALLS WOMAN WINS BIG PRIZE

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Lacee Gamerdinger Wins $25,000 Playing "Bingo Times 10" Instant-Scratch Game

DES MOINES, Iowa – After finding her favorite lottery scratch game in a store she doesn't often visit, a Cedar Falls woman bought a ticket and won a $25,000 prize.

Lacee Gamerdinger, 21, said she and her family were in disbelief when she won the big prize playing "Bingo Times 10."

"I thought I'd just won $100 and then I looked and saw I had won $25,000! It was a very nice surprise," Gamerdinger said.

Gamerdinger said she'd been looking for Bingo Times 10 tickets at several retailers, but most have replaced the game with different tickets.

"I don't ever stop at this store, but I happened to stop there and saw that they had Bingo Times 10 and I had been looking for them everywhere," she said.

Gamerdinger's brother and boyfriend James Wissink were there when she discovered the win. She said neither of them believed her until they saw the ticket.

"We all had to pile into the car to go to the store to check it out and see if it really was $25,000. Then we ran out of the store screaming and then had to call a few people," she said with a laugh.

Gamerdinger, who works as a multi-service associate for United Medical Parts, said she took some time off so she could claim her prize Monday at the Iowa Lottery's regional office in Cedar Rapids.

Gamerdinger said she hasn't nailed down any plans for her winnings yet. She bought her winning ticket at Casey's, 5226 University Ave. in Cedar Falls.

Bingo Times 10 is a $10 scratch game. Players try to match any complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line, four corners, or an "X" pattern on one of the eight Bingo cards to win the corresponding prize in the prize arrow that points to their card. The "10X" symbol is a "Free" space. If the 10X symbol appears in any winning Bingo pattern, the prize is multiplied by 10. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game are 1 in 3.37.

Six top prizes of $250,000 have yet to be claimed in Bingo Times 10, along with 19 prizes of $25,000, 55 prizes of $2,500, 110 prizes of $1,000, and thousands more prizes of $100 to $500.

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.