Somebody Bought a $315,000 Lottery Ticket at the Ridgefield Rosauers
A Hit 5 ticket sold at the store on South 47th Avenue matched all five numbers in Wednesday night's drawing. Go check your glove box, your junk drawer, and the bottom of your grocery bag.
Someone out there did a normal Wednesday grocery trip, grabbed a one-dollar lottery ticket on the way out, and is now sitting on $315,000. And they did it at our Rosauers.
Washington's Lottery confirmed the winning Hit 5 ticket for the Wednesday, August 19 drawing was sold at the Rosauers grocery store at 101 South 47th Avenue in Ridgefield. The player matched all five white balls to take the entire cashpot.
The winning numbers were 2, 8, 14, 17 and 34.
Rosauers does not walk away empty-handed either. As the selling retailer, the store is getting a $3,150 bonus — one percent of the prize — just for being the place where it happened.
The Details
Seriously, Go Check Your Ticket
Here is the part that keeps this interesting: a ticket being sold in Ridgefield does not mean the winner lives in Ridgefield. It means the winner was standing in our grocery store. Could be a neighbor. Could be somebody driving up I-5 who stopped for gas station coffee and a sandwich and made a spontaneous financial decision.
Either way, if you bought a Hit 5 ticket at Rosauers in the last couple of weeks, this is your sign. Hit 5 tickets can be bought for up to 25 consecutive drawings, so plenty of people are carrying around a ticket they have not looked at since they bought it.
How Hit 5 Actually Works
Hit 5 is the low-key one. A play costs a dollar. You pick five numbers between 1 and 42, or you let the machine Quick Pick them, which is what most of us do because who has a system.
Match all five and you take the cashpot, which starts at $100,000 and climbs until somebody hits it. Drawings are every night at 8 p.m., with sales cutting off at 7:45 p.m. for that night's drawing and reopening a minute later for the next one.
Because Wednesday's cashpot got claimed, the pot reset. It was back down to $100,000 as of Thursday and has been building since.
Questions You Are Probably Asking
Who won
Unknown so far. Washington's Lottery identified the selling retailer and the prize amount, but not the player. Reporting on the win did not say whether the ticket has been claimed yet.
Does the winner have to live in Ridgefield
No. All we know is where the ticket was purchased.
Does Rosauers get anything out of it
Yes — a $3,150 bonus from Washington's Lottery for selling the winning ticket.
Is Rosauers now officially lucky
Statistically, no. A drawing does not remember where the last ticket came from. Emotionally and locally, obviously yes, and I fully expect the lottery machine there to have a line this weekend.
More from Meanwhile in Ridgefield
If it was you, I am not going to ask you to tell me. I am just going to quietly hope you buy something great downtown with it. And if you find a forgotten Rosauers ticket in your car this weekend and it changes your life, you know where to find me.
Details on the drawing were reported by The Olympian and confirmed through Washington's Lottery. Gambling is fun for most people and a real problem for some — if it has stopped being fun for you or someone you love, the national helpline is 1-800-522-4700.