Since September, Tina Edwards drove around Greensboro not knowing that a Cash 5 ticket worth more than half a million dollars sat beside her.

“I didn’t know I won,” said Edwards. “I was riding around with it for two months with no idea I had a winning ticket.”

Edwards, a customer service manager, stopped at the Bestway on Walker Avenue in Greensboro and bought a few lottery tickets while on the way to dinner with a co-worker.

On Tuesday—over a month later — Edwards and the same co-worker visited a different gas station and decided to check the old tickets.

“We were in the store and she said, ’Oh! You won something,’” recalled Edwards. “I’ve been in complete shock for the last two days.”

Edwards matched all five white balls in the Sept. 28 drawing to win the jackpot. She arrived at lottery headquarters Thursday to collect her prize and, after required state and federal tax withholdings, took home $464,121.

Edwards said she can now cross two things off her bucket list: paying off her house and a family trip to Dubai.

Cash 5 is one of four lottery games in North Carolina where players have the option of buying their tickets through a retail location or Online Play, either through the lottery’s website or with the NC Lottery Official Mobile App. Cash 5 tickets are $1 and drawings are held every night. Thursday’s jackpot is $185,000.

Ticket sales from lottery games make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $2.5 million a day on average for education. For details on how $33 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Guilford County in 2021, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.