Attention El Jebel shoppers: Did you win $25K a year for life?

Provided |
A lottery ticket worth $25,000 a year for life to its holder was sold in El Jebel for Monday’s drawing in a lottery game that’s new to Colorado.
Colorado just two weeks ago became the 21st state to join Lucky for Life, Colorado Lottery spokeswoman Kelly Tabor said. The game started in Connecticut and grew from a consortium of New England state lotteries, Tabor said.
The winning ticket sold at the City Market in El Jebel is the second-biggest possible prize, which came from matching five numbers. Players pick numbers from 1 to 48 and a lucky ball number from 1 to 18. The odds of winning the $25,000 per year for life were one in 1,813,028.
The top prize is $1,000 a day for life, which comes from matching five numbers plus the “Lucky Ball.”
Drawings are Monday and Thursday. Unlike other lottery games, the jackpot doesn’t grow, Tabor noted.
Tabor said Tuesday morning she did not know of a winner having come forward. The ticket holder has 180 days to claim the prize at a lottery office in Grand Junction, Fort Collins, Pueblo or Denver, she said.
The prizes are pretax amounts, Tabor said, and the top two prizes are guaranteed for 20 years, so if a person dies, the winnings are passed on through the estate. If a person lives longer than 20 years, the payments continue for life.
Monday’s winner has a lump-sum option of $390,000, Tabor said.
The El Jebel City Market, likely by virtue of its volume of sales, was the top seller of reportable winning tickets over the past 10 years when the area’s outlier big jackpots are factored out, according to a data analysis earlier this year by the Post Independent. It sold $676,080 worth of reportable winning tickets between Jan. 1, 2006, and the end of 2015, and ranked 98th in the state among Colorado sales outlets.
Mark Friend, assistant store manager at the City Market, said the store was notified Tuesday morning that someone purchased the winning ticket there Monday night, but the staff was unaware of the winner’s identity.

Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism
Readers around Glenwood Springs and Garfield County make the Post Independent’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.
Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.
Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.