Waterloo Woman Wins $100,000 Lottery Prize
Taylor Lumsden Wins Top Prize in 'Fiesta!' Scratch Game
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CLIVE, Iowa - A Waterloo woman said it was difficult to convince her family that she'd actually won a $100,000 lottery prize.
"At first they did definitely think it was a joke," Taylor Lumsden told officials on Wednesday as she claimed her prize at the Iowa Lottery's Cedar Rapids regional office. "We've done it before — we've gotten the fake scratch-offs and we've done this before to them. So they just figured it was another time we were joking because our family is big on joking."
Lumsden, 29, bought her lucky ticket at Casey's, 1604 LaPorte Road in Waterloo, where she'd stopped to redeem a few prizes on other tickets. As soon as she uncovered the $100,000 prize, she went over to her father's house to show him.
"I was like, 'Hey, Dad, can you look at this ticket for me? I don't think it's right, I don't think it's that easy that you just match that one number,'" she recalled. "He was like, 'Are you kidding? This is one of those fake ones, isn't it? I was like, 'No, it's real!'"
They took the ticket to a nearby gas station to verify it, and when Lumsden heard the "Woohoo you're a winner!" sound play from the store's lottery terminal, she knew it was true.
"The lady was like, 'Yeah, we don't have this much money here!'" Lumsden said with a laugh. "I was like, 'It really is real!'"
Lumsden said she plans to use her winnings to purchase a car and pay for her classes to become an ultrasound technician. She also wants to invest part of her winnings.
"We're going to hopefully figure out some type of business that Waterloo needs," she said. "I want some type of good to come from it."
Lumsden claimed the second top prize in the lottery's "Fiesta!" game. Fiesta! is a $10 scratch game that features eight top prizes of $100,000 and overall odds of 1 in 3.05. For more information about this game and the number of prizes still available, visit ialottery.com.
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