(KSBY) — More than 57 million Powerball lottery tickets were sold in the U.S. for a drawing on Oct. 4, 2021, but only one man beat the odds.
Scott Godfrey, the winner of the $699.8 million jackpot, spoke exclusively with KSBY News anchor Nina Lozano on Thursday.
"At first, it's like you don't think it's real, like there's something wrong with the ticket. You think it can't actually be that," Godfrey explained.
Godfrey bought the winning ticket at the Albertsons grocery store on Quintana Road in Morro Bay.
"I saw, actually, a news report on TV where they had a dark image of the store in the morning and I realized I had been there last night and thought about the ticket," he said.
His Quick Pick ticket landed him the fifth-largest Powerball jackpot and the seventh-largest jackpot in overall lottery history.
"Everybody thinks there's a possibility of winning. It's so infrequent that you can't imagine it being you so it's pretty special when you find out," Godfrey said.
He chose a lump sum payout of $496 million minus federal taxes.
So what is he going to do with the money?
"We've already set up a foundation that's going to receive quite a bit of the money for working on deliberate charitable things."
He's already making good on that promise, donating a carload of toys to KSBY's Season of Hope toy drive on Thursday.
"We feel blessed and we feel like there is a direct reason that we were entrusted with this," Godfrey said. "That's why we were so deliberate that this goes and does as much good to those who are less fortunate as possible."
For selling the winning ticket, Albertsons will receive a bonus of $1 million from the lottery, and California schools will receive $78 million from ticket sales.
If you win the lottery in California, officials are required to publish your name as well as the location where the winning ticket was bought.
