Close Call

For one New Jersey resident, watching television has changed his life forever. Jimmie Smith of East Orange, New Jersey, is one lucky man. According to the Washington Post is a retired security guard whom for many years, decades to be exact, played the lottery dating all the way back to the 60’s.

What Smith didn’t know was that all those years of his dedication of buying lottery tickets from locations in New York and New Jersey would pay off decades later, making him a multi-millionaire.

He Almost Missed His Mega Millions

The eerie part of Smith’s story is that if he hadn’t been at the right place at the right time, he would have missed out on his mega millions fortune. But luckily for Smith, he dodged the expiration date for collecting  his millions by a mere 48 hours.

Getting Around To It

Sixty-eight year old retired security guard  Jimmie Smith of East Orange, New Jersey, is the proud recipient of $24.1 million dollars from the New York lottery where he hit the jackpot.  While watching the evening news, Smith saw a segment where it was discussed that time was running out for the winner to step forward and claim the jackpot.

That got Smith to thinking about the lottery tickets he had purchased some time ago. Smith kept his tickets in an old favorite shirt pocket in his closet and he hadn’t gotten around to checking his tickets. But luckily for Smith, the news reminded him that time was running out. Smith headed to his room and retrieved the tickets from that favorite shirt pocket and started to check the winning numbers that were just discussed on the evening news against his tickets according to information posted on NJ.

Sifting through the pile of tickets he had collected and not checked for some time, Smith shockingly stumbled upon the ticket that matched the winning numbers that was mentioned on the news:

“I ended up with a stack – a pile of tickets, including the one they were talking about on the news,” the father of two and grandfather of 12 told lottery officials. “I stood there for a minute thinking, ‘Do I see what I think I see?’ I had to stick my head out the window and breathe in some fresh air. I was in serious doubt. I really had to convince myself this was real.”

On May 23rd Smith turned in that winning lottery ticket. But the tricky part was that the lottery officials had allegedly stated back in the spring that the grand prize was claimed and the winner’s identity would be revealed  “in the near future pending completion of the Lottery’s security background review” according to the source. But that claim nor the identity of the winner never took place. When speaking to the lottery officials Smith shared that he had been buying lottery tickets for a long time and was never in a rush to check his tickets:

“I always told myself, ‘I’ll check them when I have the time,’ ” he said.

The lottery commision announced Smith as the winner on Wednesday. If Smith would have waited much longer he would have missed out on his millions. Smith only had 2 days left before his ticket would have expired when he watched the announcement on the news. He also did not take the lump sum payment, he decided on the annuity option which he will receive payments for the next 26 years. Smith’s winning numbers were 5-12-13-22-25 and 35. Talk about in the nick of time!