A 39-year-old Genesee County woman turned a $30 Michigan Lottery win into a $1 million prize after stopping for tickets during a Cinco de Mayo outing in Flint. She said she scratched the Lucky Stars ticket in the store and ran to her car crying when she realized what she had won.
The woman bought a few tickets at Liquor Wheel on Clio Road earlier this month and won $30 on the first one. She used those winnings to buy two more tickets, including a $5 Lucky Stars instant game ticket. One of those tickets hit the $1 million top prize. “It was unreal,” she said, adding that she is still trying to process the win.
Her trip to Michigan Lottery headquarters turned the shock into paperwork, where she claimed her prize and chose a one-time lump sum payment of about $693,000 instead of annuity payments. She said she plans to buy her parents a new house and a car, then save the rest. The win landed at a good moment for Lucky Stars, a new $5 instant game that launched this month and has already paid out more than $2 million to players.
The game still has more than $20 million in prizes unclaimed, including two $1 million top prizes and nine $2,500 prizes. That makes the woman’s decision to keep playing after a modest early win the part of the story that matters most: the extra tickets were bought with house money, and one of them changed her finances in a single scratch. Lottery players in 2025 have already won more than $1.7 billion playing instant games, a reminder of how quickly small wins can lead to much larger ones.
Her experience was not the only recent million-dollar win in the state. A 48-year-old Oakland County man also recently claimed $1 million, this time on a separate Michigan Lottery instant game, $1,000,000 Cash Spectacular. He bought his winning ticket at Main Street Convenience Inc. at 402 South Main Street in Ann Arbor, chose about $693,000 as a lump sum and said he plans to start college funds for his children.
For the Genesee County woman, the prize is already spoken for in broad strokes: family first, then savings. She said the win will give her household a measure of financial security and help her children’s future, a shift that began with a stop she did not plan to make and a $30 win she did not expect to repeat.
