Natashia Rogers of Shelby used a personal approach to selecting her scratch-off ticket and it paid off with a $200,000 prize.

“I picked the number of the scratch-off by the age I was when I had my kids,” she said.

Rogers bought her lucky ticket at Curve View Express on West Warren Street in Shelby and she chose the $5 Ice scratch-off in the No. 36 slot in the store’s dispenser because she was 36 years old when she had her second child.

“I don’t even know why I did that it was just random,” Rogers said. “It was my first time doing that.”

She said she wanted to share the news of her big win right away.

“I texted my boyfriend a picture of it,” she said. “He said, ‘That’s awesome. Who won that?’”

Rogers arrived at lottery headquarters Thursday to collect her prize and, after required state and federal tax withholdings, took home $142,501.

“I’m happy but I think I am still in shock,” Roger said.

She said she doesn’t know how she will spend her winnings but she knows she will “have fun with it.”

Ticket sales from scratch-offs make it possible for the lottery to raise $2.5 million a day on average for education. Cleveland County received $28.5 million in grants, using funds raised by the lottery, to help with school construction. For details on other ways money raised by the lottery made a difference in Cleveland County last year, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.