A local family had a stroke of luck most people only dream about.
William Hicks and his sons, William, Jr. and Stephen, of the Campbell Co. city of California, claimed their $500,000 Kentucky Lottery scratch-off prize last Friday.
William, Jr. and Stephen Hicks were riding together to work at the garage door repair company that their father owns when they stopped at the Speedway store on Alexandria Pike in Alexandria.
The brothers each bought a scratch-off lottery ticket, something they do occasionally.
“I’ll usually scratch one and he’ll (Stephen) scratch one,” William, Jr. said. “Stephen suddenly tells me we’d won five hundred thousand dollars, but I figured he was looking at it wrong. We must have looked at it forty times and I asked to be pinched a few times.”
The ticket matched the number 7, winning the game’s $500,000 top prize.
Next, they called their dad to tell him the news.
“Dad, you’re not going to believe this. We’ve just won a half a million dollars,” William, Jr. said.
“I was like, no way. He spent the next few minutes trying to convince me,” William, Sr. said. “William immediately started telling me who he was going to help out. That’s just the way he is.”
The three men showed up at lottery headquarters in Louisville hours later to claim the prize.
After taxes, they each received a check for $118,333.33. Stephen told officials that he needed tires for his truck and the day before had bought just one because that was all he could afford.
“Now, I’m going to buy a truck,” he said.
William, Jr. says he plans to pay off his mom’s mortgage and help his grandmother.
As for the dad, he has been renting a farmhouse and is looking to buy the property.
Speedway will receive a $5,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
