For seven days Mildred McDonald of Eastover had a Cash 5 ticket worth $120,315 on her bedroom dresser and didn’t even realize it.

“My husband will get the tickets and just put them there,” McDonald said. “I forgot that he had bought one.”

McDonald finally checked the ticket Thursday while she was on the porch waiting for her 10-year-old grandson to get off the school bus.

“At first I thought my husband was playing a trick on me,” McDonald said. “I thought he had someone make up a fake ticket.”

It wasn’t a trick. The ticket beat odds of one in 749,398 to win the jackpot in the Sept. 1 drawing. McDonald claimed the prize Friday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required state and federal tax withholdings, she took home $83,620. She plans to use some of the money to pay for her husband’s new zero-turn lawn mower.

McDonald’s husband bought the $1 Quick Pick ticket at the Lucky 7 Truck Stop on Wade Stedman Road in Wade.

Ticket sales from draw games like Cash 5 make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $600 million a year for education. For details on how lottery funds have made a difference in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties click on the “For Education” section of the lottery’s website.