On His Way to Chemo, Guy Made a Very Lucky Stop

It was already set to be a good day for Ronnie Foster, but a last-minute pit stop was the icing on the cake. The North Carolina man, a retired Department of Transportation worker from Pink Hill who has colon cancer, was headed to his very last chemotherapy treatment on Tuesday when he stopped at a convenience store in Beulaville to pick up a scratch-off lottery ticket, CBS News reports. Foster forked over the $1 he usually did, played his card, and found out he'd won $5. He plunked his new winnings down for a $5 scratch-off, then bought a second $5 card just for the heck of it. While he didn't win anything with the first ticket, the second one had something else in store.

"I saw all those zeros and I froze," Foster said, per a North Carolina Education Lottery release. His big win: $200,000. "When it showed, 'Go to lottery headquarters,' I started shaking. I couldn't believe it." Foster tells CBS he started undergoing chemo in April after a February surgery, and that he couldn't say if this stroke of luck on an already significant day was a "sign"; he "just might have been at the right place at the right time." His take-home windfall of just over $140,000 after taxes will go toward paying medical costs not covered by insurance, as well as buying a lawn mower and car, with the rest to be squirreled away in savings. "I was already happy because it was my last round of chemo," says Foster, per the release. "Winning this made it my lucky day." (More uplifting news stories.)