Winning lottery ticket narrowly saved from trash

CLINTON, Ind. (WISH) - A western Indiana man’s good luck nearly turned into very bad luck when he realized he had thrown away a $50,000 winning lottery ticket.

"I don't know what I did, or what I looked at, but for some reason I thought it was no good and I threw it away," said Ernest ‘Ernie’ Scott III, Clinton.

But after a friend told him – mistakenly – that the numbers Scott played in a different game had been drawn, Scott got online to check and realized that the ticket he’d thrown away was the real winner.

There, on the screen, listed as the winning Lucky 5 numbers for Feb. 2, were the five numbers Scott, who works in manufacturing, had been playing for months: 5-7-14-18-28. He knew the numbers by heart because they are a combination of his wife and four children's birthdates.

He knew they were the numbers he'd played that day. He also knew he had thrown the ticket away.

"He was sitting at the computer mumbling and mumbling. I couldn't tell what he was saying," said Scott's wife, Kathy. "Finally I saw what he was looking at, and I said, 'did you win the Lottery?' And he said, 'I threw the ticket away.'"

The family scrambled to the kitchen to retrieve the ticket from the trash, which had thankfully not been taken out. They found it buried under coffee grounds, soggy and stained.

At Hoosier Lottery on Tuesday morning, it was verified that all the information necessary to validate the ticket was intact and readable.

"When I looked at the ticket covered in coffee, I couldn't help but tease Ernie," said Hoosier Lottery Security Investigator Brian Morris. "I told him to find a better coaster."

The Scotts hope to use their "trash-can winnings" to build a garage and take their kids to Florida. As for the friend who's phone call prompted the discovery of the win, the Scott's say they plan to treat him to a steak dinner.