His Lottery Ticket Held a Good Omen, Was a Big Win

When Alexander McLeish was recovering from open-heart surgery last month, a friend bought the Massachusetts man a "get well" card and put three scratch-off tickets inside. Turns out one of those tickets was a winner, netting the Attleboro man a $1 million prize, reports WWLP. Per a release from the Massachusetts State Lottery, McLeish spotted a good omen right off the bat as he began to scratch off the portion of the $5,000,000 100X Cashword ticket called "Your Letters": The first three letters in the two rows of 20 were "AWM," his initials.

But even better things were yet to come from the ticket that McLeish's friend had picked up at a local convenience store—notably, a $1 million jackpot, which McLeish has opted to take as a one-time pretax cash payout of $650,000. McLeish, who put in for his prize on Friday at the lottery agency's Dorchester office, says the same pal who hooked him up with the winning ticket had bought him a lotto ticket a few years back that was a $1,000 winner. McLeish isn't the only lucky one: The store where the friend purchased this particular ticket will get a $10,000 bonus for being the seller. (More uplifting news stories.)