Robin Hicks of Burlington wanted to make fajitas for dinner on Saturday night and spiced it up with a $250,000 win.

Hicks’s big win would not have occurred had she not forgotten fajita mix and tomatoes during her run to the grocery store. To get the key ingredients, she went back to the grocery store and stopped at her favorite local store on her way back home, Kim’s Mart on Webb Avenue in Burlington, to collect a $50 prize.

“I was actually gonna get one of the new $5 tickets,” she recalled. But as she stood in line to check out a 20X The Cash ticket seemed to call her name.

“I’d only played the 20X The Cash one other time,” said Hicks. This one “ended up being the big one!”

She claimed her prize Monday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required federal and state tax withholdings, she took home $178,126.

“Yay for steak fajitas and forgetting tomato and fajita mix!” she joked.

To celebrate she says she will make sure she and her mother pay off all their bills.

“It’s gonna be great from here on out!” she said.

The $5 game launched in February with eight $250,000 top prizes. Four remain to be won.

Ticket sales from scratch-off games make it possible for the lottery to raise an average of $2.5 million a day for education. For details on how $9.8 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Alamance County in 2022, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.