In an economy where people are living paycheck to paycheck and looking for side hustles to save up for the future after making ends meet, hitting a jackpot and quitting work is an opportunity few would refuse. With the same in mind, a transit worker once joked that she'd leave her job if she could just win the lottery with a stroke of luck. In that moment, Stacey Fiore, a supervisor for New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), unknowingly manifested something that changed her life as she went on to win a $1 million Powerball prize.
Although the MTA worker and mother from Barnegat matched all the winning numbers to bag a million dollars, she didn't have the Powerball number 16, which could've helped her clinch the $92 million mega jackpot.
The woman, who plays both major multi-state lottery games Powerball and Mega Millions every week, said that she usually checks the numbers following the draw, but this time she waited until Monday. Fiore failed to believe that she had won the lottery, so she asked her husband Greg, a bus driver for the MTA to confirm if hers was the winning ticket. “I told him he better not be messing with me,” Fiore said jokingly at the press conference. She further asked him to make sure that they bought the real tickets.
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According to nj.com, the odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are 292,201,388 to 1 and for Fiore, the odds of winning the $1 million prize were 1 in 11,688,053. Her Powerball ticket was the 10th one sold in New Jersey this year to win the second prize. Only a total of 39 people in the state have won $1 million or more playing games, lottery officials said. The MTA worker in her early 50s was overjoyed and proud of her win. "You wait your whole life for this, and you are still in shock,” she told the lottery officials.
According to NBC New York, Fiore had joked to her colleagues about not coming back to work even if she won big. While the sentiment is common amongst most who hope to get lucky, Fiore did choose to keep working as she was back on duty at Staten Island the following week.
She was elated about winning the million-dollar prize and said during a press conference, “I went to the bank and asked to speak to the manager. I said ‘You know somebody won $1 million here in town? Well, that’s me!’ She was super excited. It’s nice to celebrate."
Fiore shared that she and her husband haven't decided what the couple are going to do with the money yet, but perhaps they would spend it on a vacation. “Our kids…they are happy for us,” Greg told the officials. “But they do know Christmas is coming," he added. Furthermore, the couple shared that they had plans to continue working but they might stop working overtime shifts.
