MONONA COUNTY WOMAN WINS $50,000 LOTTERY PRIZE

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Barb Smith Wins Top Prize in Scratch Game

DES MOINES, Iowa - A western Iowa woman has cashed a big-winning lottery ticket.

Barb Smith of Whiting won a $50,000 prize playing the “Midwest Millions” instant-scratch game. She bought her winning ticket at Kirby's Corner Market, 221 Whittier St. in Whiting, where she works.

Smith claimed her prize Tuesday at the Iowa Lottery's regional office in Council Bluffs.

Midwest Millions is a scratch game that is available in both Iowa and Kansas. Players in both states are buying tickets and competing for prizes as part of one big pool designed to test the “Powerball concept” that has worked so well in lotto games. By joining together, lotteries can offer games with larger prizes, and more of them, than they would have been able to achieve on their own.

In addition to the instant prizes a player can win in Midwest Millions, the game features two second-chance drawings that each will offer a top prize of $500,000 and five prizes of $10,000. Players who don't win an instant prize on their Midwest Millions tickets can enter them in the second-chance drawings. The first drawing in the game will be Jan. 9 in Topeka, Kan. The second drawing will be April 17 in Des Moines.

This is the second year that the Iowa and Kansas lotteries have teamed up to offer a Midwest Millions game. In the first version of the scratch game, both of the $500,000 winners ended up being Iowa Lottery players, although the winners can be from either state.

Five top instant prizes of $50,000 are still up for grabs in this year's game as well as 23 prizes of $5,000 and more than 230 prizes of $500. The overall odds of winning an instant prize in the game are 1 in 2.84.

Since the Iowa Lottery's inception in 1985, more than $2.2 billion has been awarded in prizes and more than $1.1 billion has been raised for state programs.