CARY, N.C. — A winning lottery ticket purchased in North Carolina worth $25,000 a year for life is set to expire next week.

Someone bought the Lucky For Life ticket at the Harris Teeter on N.C. 55 in Cary, North Carolina, on April 11, a Monday. The winner has 180 days to claim the prize, which ends Oct. 7.

"We're asking Lucky For Life players in Wake County to double check their tickets," said Alice Garland, executive director of the N.C. Education Lottery. "It takes a lot of luck to win, and we hate to see any prize go unclaimed."

The winning numbers for the April 11 drawing were 4, 12, 16, 20, 24, and 18. The missing ticket matched five of those numbers, good for second prize. The top prize is $1,000 a day for life.

The odds of winning the second prize are one in 1.8 million.

To claim the prize, the ticket must be brought to lottery headquarters on Yonkers Road in Raleigh by 5 p.m. Oct. 7.

The state lottery tries to get the word out when big prizes are in danger of going unclaimed, says spokeswoman Kathleen Jacob. The last time it happened was in June with a $100,000 Powerball ticket sold in Hendersonville, Jacob said, and the player saw a report about it on the local TV news and claimed the prize five hours before it was about to expire.

Still, sometimes big lottery prizes go unclaimed. In 2011, a Powerball ticket worth $1 million purchased at a convenience store on New Bern Avenue did not materialize before the deadline.

When that happens, half the money goes back into the prize fund for future games and the other half goes to the education fund.

Lucky for Life is a multi-state lottery game currently played in 20 states plus Washington, D.C. Winning lottery tickets must always be redeemed in the state they were purchased, even for multi-state games.