CLIVE, Iowa — A Dubuque County man who won $250,000 lottery prize with his wife said the feeling was difficult to describe.
"You play out of fun with the hopes of winning, but I never expected to win like that," Eric Guetter, 50, of Worthington said on Monday as he and his wife, Deanne, claimed their "Lucky 7 Bonus" top prize at the lottery's Cedar Rapids regional office. "I always thought it would be nice, but when it actually happened, I just couldn't believe it."
Eric Guetter said they bought a handful of tickets at Morning Star Station, 304 First St. N. in Worthington and took them home to scratch. When Eric Guetter uncovered a winning symbol on his ticket, he thought he'd won $25 until he scratched off the prize amount and saw one zero after another.
"I got the magnifying glass out to look a little closer, then I looked at my wife and was like, 'Babe, we won a quarter-million dollars!'" he recalled with a laugh.
They took the ticket back to the gas station where an employee verified the win on the store's lottery terminal.
"It's disbelief at first until I made sure my eyes weren't lying to me," Eric Guetter said. "And then it was like a great weight lifted off me because we can actually pay off our house now. Wow, it just feels great."
Lucky 7 Bonus is a $20 scratch game that features 20 top prizes of $250,000, 76 prizes of $10,000 and overall odds of 1 in 2.88. For more information about this game, and the number of prizes still available, visit www.ialottery.com.