Kristi Sadler bought a winning lottery ticket from her bar, Kristi’s Pour House, according to Michigan Lottery officials.
Street View Image from November 2023 © 2023 Google
After a Michigan woman’s husband died, she and another person formed a lottery club.
The two-person club decided on a “special code word” they’d use if they ever won a prize, according to a Nov. 16 news release.
In September, those two members got to use their code word for the first time.
Kristi Sadler, the CCKMA club representative, told lottery officials she bought a Powerball ticket for the Sept. 11 drawing from her own bar.
“The morning after the drawing, I got a call that my business had sold a $1 million winner and I just had a feeling it was our ticket,” Sadler recently told lottery officials.
Her feeling was correct.
With numbers 09-25-27-53-66, she had matched the five white balls during the drawing — and won a $1 million prize, according to the release.
“After I checked the ticket, I had to call the other club member, who was on vacation out of the country, to let him know we had won,” Sadler recalled. “We had always joked that we’d use a special code word if we won, so when he answered and told me he had to pay extra for overseas calls, I said the code word and I told him he wasn’t going to have to worry about the bill!”
The club members plan to invest the money in their retirement accounts, officials said.
The winning ticket was sold at Kristi’s Pour House in Hart, about 80 miles northwest of Grand Rapids.
In Michigan, groups of two or more people can form lottery clubs to purchase games together. If a club wins, the prize is divided among members.
