From television viewer to lottery winner

By Kate Northrop

SPOKANE, Wash. — A Washington woman who loves watching "My Lottery Dream Home" will get to buy her own home after taking inspiration from the reality TV show and winning a $250,000 lottery prize.

A reality television fan's dream came true after she took inspiration from other lottery winners featured on "My Lottery Dream Home" and used it to win a $250,000 prize.

Shannon Fernandez loves the television series, so much so that she noticed something interesting about the lottery winners featured on the show.

"The show just happens to profile a lot of people who win playing $10 scratch games, so I figured that should be the type of ticket I buy," Fernandez told Washington's Lottery. "There was a sparkly new $10 ticket that caught my eye, and that's the one I bought. Turned out I picked right!"

She visited the Walmart on North Colton Street in Spokane and purchased two $10 "Diamond Crossword" scratch-off tickets at the self-serve vending machine. Fernandez put the tickets in her purse to play at home later.

After going about her day, she pulled out the tickets and got to work. As Fernandez scratched the corresponding letters in the crossword play area, she realized she was racking up more and more complete words.

"At first, I counted 10 complete words, which is $1,000 prize, and that's pretty cool since the most I'd ever won before is maybe $150," Fernandez said to Lottery officials. "Then I kept looking and found an eleventh word, which meant a $5,000 prize. I was so excited that I called my husband, and we planned to celebrate later that night with a nice dinner."

Thinking $5,000 was the extent of her win, she drove to the local Safeway with her lucky ticket and had a clerk scan it to confirm it. That's when she noticed his eyes grow wide.

"I'm flabbergasted!" Fernandez recalled the cashier saying.

She received her ticket back, in addition to a prize confirmation slip that instructed her to visit the Lottery's Department of Imagination store at Northtown Mall to claim a large prize. The unsuspecting winner was still under the impression that it was only worth $5,000.

"He didn't actually say the amount out loud," Fernandez said in a press release. "I just put the ticket and slip in my purse and drove off. It wasn't until I got to the mall and walked into the lottery store that I looked at the slip and nearly fainted when I saw that it said $250,000 on it. I guess that twelfth word was somewhere on the ticket after all!"

Lottery officials at the store reconfirmed that the prize was bigger than she had thought, after which the delighted woman called her husband to break the exciting news.

The pair had already been considering buying a new home, and this win was icing on the cake. Not only will the prize give them more financial comfort, but it'll allow them to go a step beyond their original expectations and buy something more akin to their "dream home."

Fernandez claimed the first of three available top prizes of $250,000 in the $10 "Diamond Crossword" scratch-off game. There are also 59 out of 78 second-tier prizes of $5,000, as well as 113 out of 147 third-tier prizes of $1,000 remaining.

The overall odds of winning any prize in the game are 1 in 3.54.