ICYMI: Employee at Falls Church Grocery Store Wins $7 Million After Hitting the Wrong Button

FALLS CHURCH, VA -- Michael Donnelly hadn’t intended to play Cash4Life, a Virginia lottery game, last month. Instead, like millions of people across the nation, he was watching the Powerballjackpot rise to historic heights.

As customer service manager at the Harris-Teeter at 6351 Columbia Pike in Falls Church, he was busy ringing up Powerball tickets for customers, but for one of those customers, he accidently hit the wrong button on the terminal. Instead of Powerball, he hit the Cash4Life button and generated a ticket that the customer didn’t want, so he ended up buying the ticket himself.

That “mistake” won him the top prize, lottery officials said recently.

His ticket matched all six numbers in the Jan. 7 Cash4Life drawing. Donnelly’s prize was a choice between $1,000 per day for the rest of his life or a one-time cash option of $7 million before taxes. He chose the cash option.

He didn’t realize he’d won until a few days later, when a customer said she had heard on the news that a winning ticket had been sold at the store. That’s when he checked the numbers and immediately called his wife, Michele, with the good news.

“If that’s true, you have to come home because I’m about to have a heart attack!” the Lottery reported her as saying.

On Jan. 29, the Woodbridge man received his check from the Virginia Lottery. Harris-Teeter received a $50,000 bonus from the Lottery for selling the winning ticket.

“It still hasn’t hit me yet,” he told Lottery officials.

Cash4Life is played in Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Drawings are held Monday and Thursday evenings at 9 p.m. Each play costs $2. The odds of winning the top prize are 1 in 21.8 million.

The Virginia Lottery generates more than $1.4 million per day for Virginia’s K-12 public schools.

Watch a video released by the Virginia Lottery of the check presentation:

PHOTO of Michael Donnelly courtesy of Virginia Lottery