Not every story of a lottery winner has to involve millions upon millions of dollars in winnings. Today we have the story of Celeste Davis, a Milwaukee lottery scratch card winner who evidently hit the "generosity jackpot". While she only won $100, this proves how the lottery can inspire goodness in us all.
Earlier in 2015, Celeste Davis purchased a $5 lotto scratch card from a lottery outlet in Milwaukee. After she scratched away, three of the four numbers matched, guaranteeing her a $50 win (a 1-in-100 chance).
Unfortunately for her, she was unable to process the ticket as her card didn't have the identification number or barcode due to it being an improperly printed ticket. Wisconsin lottery heard her story and felt extremely bad for her, even taking the extraordinary steps of re-printing all of the lottery scratch tickets that were at the store she purchased it from, in order to see if any matched her win. None did. The story ended at that point with a $5 cheque made out to Celeste.
Yet, after hearing of Celeste's plight, local man Scott Chiples decided to pay it forward, by sending Celeste a $100 cheque. Scott sent the money along with a short note "You go girl! Merry Christmas. Scott and Leslie [Leslie is Scott's wife]."
"People can read something and it could touch them, but they don't necessarily act on it, I wasn't expecting it," said a jubilant Celeste. Scott could not believe that the store Celeste purchased the lottery scratcher card from would not just simply pay her out. "I can't believe Woodman's wouldn't have just paid her claim. They would have gotten thousands of dollars of goodwill out of the story." Despite the store not paying Celeste or bothering to contact her after this act of goodwill, she continues to shop there until this very day.
This would never have happened to Celeste if she had purchased her lottery tickets online. You'll never lose your ticket, and you'll always have a guarantee of your purchase in the form of a scanned copy of your lottery ticket.
