Lincoln woman wins $218,000 playing Nebraska Pick 5

Julie Rondeau of Lincoln won $218,000 playing Nebraska Pick 5 from the Nebraska Lottery.

Rondeau purchased her winning ticket from The C Station at 1401 Pine Lake Road in Lincoln. The winning ticket contained two quick pick plays, one of which had the winning numbers 04, 10, 23, 25 and 36 from the September 16 drawing.

Rondeau came to claim her prize on September 17 and said she’d been checking her tickets while working at home that morning when she discovered she won.

“I called my boss and said ‘I’m taking the rest of the day off, I won the Nebraska Pick 5,” she said.

Rondeau then called her husband Dan who she said began to freak out upon hearing the news. Dan headed home and the two drove over to the Nebraska Lottery offices in Lincoln.

The couple are planning to use the money to pay off some bills, Rondeau said.

“The house and car will be all that’s left,” she said. “This is amazing. It’s like a second chance to start over.”

Nebraska Pick 5 is Nebraska’s unique Lottery game: all the proceeds from Nebraska Pick 5 stay in Nebraska, and all the winning tickets are sold in Nebraska at Nebraska Lottery Lotto game retailers. The odds of winning the Nebraska Pick 5 jackpot, which starts at $50,000 and grows by $4,000 each drawing that is not won, are 1 in 501,942 while the overall odds of winning a prize in the game, which has drawings seven nights a week, are 1 in 8.

The mission of the Nebraska Lottery is to generate proceeds for good causes while providing quality entertainment options to Nebraskans. Over $740 million has been raised for the Nebraska Lottery’s beneficiary funds since the Lottery began in 1993. All 93 counties in Nebraska have benefited from projects funded with these Nebraska Lottery proceeds.