Johnnie Ponder of Durham said she and her husband started dancing after they won a $200,000 lottery prize.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Ponder said. “I told my husband, and he just did a happy-dance.”

The retired school teacher’s good luck happened when she asked her husband to buy some lottery tickets.

“I had some extra money,” Ponder explained. “I hadn’t played the lottery in a while, so I figured, ‘Why not?’”

Her husband went to the Boulevard Family Fare on Chapel Hill Boulevard in Durham and bought five Cash Vault tickets.

“I scratched the first four tickets and didn’t win anything,” Ponder described. “When I got to the fifth one, I saw the $200,000. I thought I was seeing things. I had my daughter come over just to make sure. I never actually thought it would happen to me.”

Ponder, with her husband and daughter in tow, claimed her prize Thursday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required state and federal tax withholdings, she took home $141,003. She plans to use some of the money to pay bills. She also plans to go on a special trip with her husband.

The $5 ticket launched earlier this month with five top prizes of $200,000. Three top prizes remain.

Ticket sales from games like Cash Vault make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $600 million dollars a year for education. For details on how $12.6 million raised by the lottery supported education programs in Durham County last year, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website, https://www.nclottery.com.