Man wins $10M prize from scratch-off after telling clerk to ‘pick whichever one’

VISALIA, Calif. (WFLA) — A California man strolled out of a gas station as a millionaire after he purchased a winning scratch-off ticket.

Brent Young said he was unsure of which scratcher he wanted to buy inside Prince Food & Gas in Visalia, California, so he asked the clerk to help him. “I was like, ‘Just pick whichever one.’ I didn’t care,” Young told the California Lottery.

So the clerk picked out a $30 California 200X game for Young.

After paying for his gas and the game, the California Lottery said Young started scratching.

About halfway down the ticket, Young uncovered a square showing the game’s top prize amount — $10 million.

“When I saw all those zeros, I was like ‘no way, this doesn’t happen to people like me,’” Young told the California Lottery. “It’s crazy. Out of all those options, the clerk could have picked a different game. But he didn’t. He grabbed a winner.”

Young told the California Lottery that he usually fills up and buys lottery tickets at a different gas station but went to Prince’s because that station was closed for the day.

“It’s almost like God’s intervention. I didn’t have a specific ticket I was going to buy, so I let someone else decide,” he explained. “I had no choice but to go to Prince’s. My usual stop was closed. If it had been open, none of this probably would have happened.”

Young claimed the lump sum prize amount of $5.8 million. The gas station’s owner collected a $50,000 prize for selling the winning ticket.