BEDFORD, Va. – A Bedford gas station joined the ranks of Virginia’s luckiest lottery retailers after selling one of four $50,000 winning Powerball tickets in Wednesday’s drawing.
The winning ticket, purchased at Stop In Food Store on Burks Hill Road in Bedford, matched four of the first five numbers plus the Powerball number.
For store employees, the news brought excitement and dreams of their own lottery aspirations.
“This amount of money is very life-changing,” said a Stop In Food Store employee, who shared that the winner’s good fortune inspired her to buy her first-ever lottery ticket just days before. “I’ve never in my whole life ever bought a ticket before, and on Sunday I bought my first ticket to try.”
The other winning tickets were purchased in Bumpass, Manassas, and through the Virginia Lottery’s online app.
In total, Wednesday’s September 3 drawing created winners across the Commonwealth, with 175,766 Virginia tickets winning various prizes.
According to the Virginia Lottery, the odds of winning any Powerball prize are 1 in 25, while the odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338.
While Bedford celebrates its $50,000 winner, the Powerball jackpot continues to surge. With no ticket matching all six numbers in Wednesday’s drawing, the prize for Saturday, September 6, has grown to an estimated $1.7 billion.