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A 76-year-old Pennsylvania woman is desperately trying to recover a jacket she donated to charity after realizing it contained a $2.5 million winning lottery ticket in one of its pockets.
Mildred Simoneriluto told Action News 4 in Pittsburgh, “I was stupefied. There are no words for it, there’s no expression. How can I get it back?”
She claims she purchased the winning Cash 5 lottery ticket at Murrysville’s Shop n’ Save last May. The ticket — which she says matches the winning numbers 14, 22, 33, 35, 38 — expires on May 8th.
It wasn’t until after the winning numbers were announced that Simoneriluto remembered where she’d left the ticket.
The situation looks bleak.
Vietnam Veterans of America, the organization that received her donation, has informed Simoneriluto that donated clothing gets distributed globally, making it impossible to track down the specific jacket. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Lottery has maintained she can’t claim her prize without physically presenting the ticket.
“What else can I do?” she lamented. “Cry out loud and hope that something will happen positive on my end?”
The fate of the multi-million dollar ticket remains unknown. Whoever currently has the jacket might attempt to cash it in, return it after learning its value, or may have already discarded it without realizing what lay hidden in its pocket.
Despite the long odds, there’s still a glimmer of hope for Simoneriluto. In a similar case last October, Khalil Soussa of Medford, Mass. misplaced a lottery ticket that turned out to be worth $1 million. Fortunately for him, a house cleaner later discovered the forgotten ticket inside a vase, allowing him to claim his windfall before it expired.
