$74,000 Nebraska Pick 5 Prize Won by Cozad Woman

June 11, 2014 – Heather Stark of Cozad recently won $74,000 playing Nebraska Pick 5 from the Nebraska Lottery.

There were more than 7,000 Nebraska Lottery winners in the Thursday, May 22, drawings. Among these winners was Stark, who purchased her winning Nebraska Pick 5 ticket at Pump & Pantry, 604 East Highway 30 in Cozad. The quick pick ticket contained one play with all five of the winning numbers (3, 9, 10, 29, 31) from the May 22 drawing for the $74,000 jackpot.

Three hundred and seven Nebraska Lottery players have won the Nebraska Pick 5 jackpot to date.

While claiming her prize on May 27, Stark told Nebraska Lottery officials that she learned she had won after returning to Pump & Pantry to check her tickets. “I saw on the Nebraska Lottery Facebook page that a winning ticket was sold in Cozad, so I decided to check my tickets,” said Stark. “I started crying when it showed I’d won, and then the clerk started crying too. It was exciting.”

Stark is no stranger to winning: in September 2008, she won $35,000 playing the $3 Scratch game Bejeweled. She plans to pay bills and purchase a new vehicle using her winnings.

Nebraska Pick 5 is Nebraska's unique Lottery game: all the proceeds from Nebraska Pick 5 stay in Nebraska, and all the winning tickets are sold in Nebraska at Nebraska Lottery Lotto game retailers. The odds of winning the Nebraska Pick 5 jackpot, which starts at $50,000 and grows by $4,000 each drawing that it is not won, are 1 in 501,942. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game, which has drawings six nights a week, are 1 in 8.