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February 5, 2010
 Richard Hooker of Bristol, Tennessee, said he “almost passed out” when he won the top prize of $50,000 in the Virginia Lottery’s American Idol™ Scratcher game.
“I started scratching and saw a lot of zeros,” he told Lottery officials as he claimed his prize at the Lottery’s Customer Service Center in Abingdon. “I’m a happy man!”
Mr. Hooker bought the winning ticket at Zoomerz at 524 Commonwealth Avenue in Bristol, Virginia. He told Lottery officials he intends to use his winnings to pay bills.
American Idol™ is one of the Virginia Lottery’s newest games. It builds on the excitement of the popular television program. The game features prizes ranging from $5 all the way up to that $50,000 top prize. And there’s more! You can enter non-winning tickets for a chance to win a VIP trip to Hollywood for five days and four nights, with two tickets to the American Idol™ Season 9 final performance show and the Wednesday night finale.
Nearly 95 cents of each dollar spent on the Virginia Lottery by players goes back to the Commonwealth in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retailer commissions. Since 1999, all Virginia Lottery profits have been designated solely to K-12 public school education in the Commonwealth. In that time, the Lottery has turned over more than $4 billion for Virginia’s public schools. The latest annual profits of $439.1 million currently represent about 7 percent of state funding for public education in Virginia. In 21 years, the Lottery has sold more than $21.1 billion in tickets, awarded more than $1.1 billion in retailer commissions and paid more than $11.6 billion in prizes to players.
Follow the Virginia Lottery on Facebook and Twitter. Please play responsibly.
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