Nick Slatten is a lucky man.
After getting off of work on March 10, the Tennessee resident went to a grocery store to purchase a beverage and Tennessee Cash ticket before heading home. Slatten checked the winning numbers the following morning and discovered he was holding a winning ticket worth $1,178,746.
“I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it,” Slatten said in a press release. “I can’t express it. It was something else.”
Slatten said he first informed his fiancée about their life-changing win, and then spent the following hours running various errands, including taking his brother to an auto shop before grabbing a bite to eat. About an hour after lunch, Slatten realized he no longer had the unsigned ticket and immediately began searching.
“I couldn’t find it anywhere,” he recalled.
As pointed out by Tennessee Cash, a lost unsigned ticket can be claimed by anyone who finds it, which is why lottery companies urge ticket-holders to sign their tickets immediately after confirming their wins.
Slatten retraced his footsteps and eventually returned to O’Reilly Auto Parts, where he had previously taken his brother. Shortly after pulling up to the parking lot, Slatten saw his winning ticket lying on the ground next to another vehicle, which was incredibly fortunate as March 11 was a particularly windy day.
“It’s a million-dollar ticket, and someone stepped right over it,” Slatten recalled.
According to Tennessee Cash, there has only been five tickets worth $1 million or more sold in Tennessee this month. Slatten said he and his fiancée will keep working and plan to by their own home, purchase better cars, and invest a portion of their winnings. Their main goal is to simply go about their lives with “not a whole lot of worries.”
