FLUSTERED MOMENT: $500,000 WINNER REALIZED HE LEFT HIS TICKET BEHIND
New Hampton Man Found His Ticket To Claim His Prize
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CLIVE, Iowa — A New Hampton man said he felt calm Tuesday as he claimed a $500,000 lottery prize. But he admits that was definitely not the case when he first realized he'd won big.
"I was shaking pretty good then, I think," Kevin Frey said as he claimed the eighth of 14 top prizes in the "$500,000 Ca$h" scratch game.
Frey in fact was so thrown off by winning big that he left behind his winning ticket.
"I was so excited and flustered that I left the ticket inside of the Casey's store and went out to the car and started calling everybody, calling my wife at first and everybody else," he said.
When one of his adult children asked Frey to send a text of the winning ticket, the situation hit him.
"And then I realized, 'I don't have it! It's in the store!'" Frey said. "Fortunately, I was still in the parking lot of the Casey's store and I ran back inside and asked the employee for the ticket. She was so flustered, she forgot to give it to me the first time. So, we finally got it on the right page."
Frey, 64, a long-time New Hampton pastor, purchased his winning ticket at Casey's, 615 N. Linn Ave. in New Hampton.
So why did his son want to see a picture of the winning ticket?
"My kids know that I tell some pretty good tales sometimes," Frey said with a laugh. "So the oldest son who lives down in Des Moines here said that it's not true until he sees a picture of the ticket. And so we took care of that and he was pretty excited, too."
The $500,000 Ca$h game is a $50 scratch game that features prizes ranging from $50 up to $500,000. Players try to match numbers in the play area on tickets in the game to win a prize. The game has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.09. For more information about this game and the number of prizes still available, visit ialottery.com.
Frey said that he and his wife, Marian, have talked about moving to the Des Moines area when they retire to be closer to family, and his lottery win will help with that along with long-term plans and investments.
"This is going to help a lot. This is exciting in that way, too," he said. "It will be fun to be able to share some of it with some of our family and some of the charities that we support and have supported for a long time."
Frey said he was able to lead church services on Sunday as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
"They told me I did a nice job on the sermon, so I said, 'Well, I guess there was something at work in the middle of all that,'" he said.
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