Lee County Woman Laughs And Laughs After $10,000 Lottery Win

Janet Charbonneau Claims Big Prize In ‘Holiday Wishes’ Scratch Game

CLIVE, Iowa — A Lee County woman said she and her husband were overcome with laughter after she won a $10,000 lottery prize.

“We just both started laughing,” Janet Charbonneau, of Wever, told officials on Wednesday as she claimed her prize at the lottery’s regional office in Cedar Rapids. “We could not stop laughing. And then the rest of the day, we’d just kind of side-eye each other and we’d both start giggling. It was just like, oh, my gosh!”

Charbonneau, 40, and her husband, Colin, stopped for a couple bottles of water at Casey’s, 75 Main St. in Middletown, on their way to Colin’s office. On a whim, she bought a “Holiday Wishes” scratch ticket because the wreath-shaped ticket caught her eye.

She scratched it off when they got to his office and uncovered a winning symbol, but didn’t believe her eyes.

“I was like, ‘No!’” she recalled. “I turned it over and read the rules. Turned it back over, looked at it again, turned it back over and read the rules again.”

She handed it to her husband, then scanned the ticket with her Iowa Lottery mobile app, which confirmed the big win.

Charbonneau, a county worker, said she had a plan for her winnings.

“I’m going to pay off my car,” she said. “I don’t owe a whole lot. And then we’re going to just put some away and fill the rainy day fund back up.”

Holiday Wishes is a $20 scratch game that features 13 top prizes of $25,000 and overall odds of 1 in 2.64.

Players can enter non-winning holiday scratch tickets into the lottery’s Winner Wonderland^®Play It Again^®promotion from now through 8:59 a.m. on Jan. 5. The promotion features $640,000 in cash prizes, including a $250,000 grand prize. For rules and complete details, visitialottery.com.