As she was getting ready for work, Rhonda Davis of Burlington opened an email letting her know she was the winner of half of a $1.6 million Cash 5 jackpot.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Davis tried her luck and bought a Quick Pick ticket for that night’s drawing through Online Play on her NC Lottery Official Mobile App.

“I got up about 5:00 the next morning and I had seen an email but I didn’t open it,” she said.

Later that morning, as she was getting ready for work, she opened the email to a message from the lottery notifying her of her win.

“I just sat there stunned like, ‘Is this for real?’” she recalled. “I had to pull myself together and I actually went to work that day!”

The other winning ticket was purchased by Barbara Gullatt of Raleigh. Both tickets matched all five white balls in the March 17 drawing.

Davis, who works as a warehouse lead, claimed her prize at lottery headquarters in Raleigh on Wednesday and took home $583,093 after required federal and state tax withholdings.

With her prize money, she plans to renovate her home and “help out a couple of people.”

Carolina Cash 5 tickets are $1 and drawings are held every night. Thursday’s jackpot is $592,000.

The odds of winning a Cash 5 jackpot are 1 in 962,598.

Cash 5 is one of four lottery games in North Carolina where players have the option of buying their tickets through Online Play either through the lottery’s website or with the NC Lottery Official Mobile App.

Ticket sales from draw games like Cash 5 make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $725 million per year for education. For details on how $9.3 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Alamance County last year, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.