Maryjane Hart considered herself a big winner last week, scoring $500 off a Pick 4 lotto card.
Little did she know, it would be nothing compared to what was coming to her.
The divorced, 57-year-old cashier sold herself a lottery ticket days before numbers were drawn and as of Wednesday, that ticket garnered her $1 million, ABC News reported.
"We're just little common people here in a very poor community so this has been a very big deal to everybody here. It's the buzz of the town," said the Doniphan, Mo. woman of her win.
And to think that she was thrilled to have won $500 the week before on a Pick 4 ticket!
Hart got a call from her ex-husband saying that the winning ticket had been sold at Hartland Pit Stop where she works as a weekend cashier after selling it -- she owned the place for 25 years.
She drove to the nearest convenience store to check her winnings and thought she had won $10,000. It wasn't until she went to another location that she discovered that the prize was actually much more: a solid million.
It took her 30 minutes to convince her daughter Nicki, who lives in Atlanta, via the phone that her luck wasn't a joke. She drove to the state lottery office in St. Louis Sunday night to get ready to claim her fortune first thing in the morning.
"I still didn't believe it until we got to the lottery office and the guy started shaking his head and said congratulations," Hart said. "Then I knew it was real."
Hart casually played lotto for years, never winning more than the $500 she did last Friday. She is an avid NASCAR fan and typically picks numbers based on her favorite drivers. When she sold herself the winning ticket, however, she was in such a rush that she opted for a quick pick instead.
She said she plans on taking a vacation to Hawaii and buying her son David, who suffers from disabilities following a serious car accident when he was 17, a new car.
"Last week his Jeep wouldn't run so I had to take him to get groceries and run errands," Hart said. "I told him I plan on buying him a vehicle that will start every morning. He started crying."
Hart, however, has no intention of quitting her job following the $710,000 payment -- the amount she's due after taxes -- she will receive in the coming days.
"I'm bored if I don't work," said Hart, who works another job Monday to Friday at Hometown Pharmacy. "Anybody that knows me knows I'll never quit working."
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