Hovey wins $100,000

RICEVILLE - It started out as a fairly normal Thursday morning, on Jan. 19. Travis Hovey went to the store to get his wife, Tammy, some pancake mix. And then it wasn’t so normal.

“On my way back home, I stopped at Casey’s and put gas in the wife’s Durango. After putting gas in, I scratched the ticket. The win symbol showed, so I thought I just won my money back, but I started scratching the prize and saw a lot of zeros. I was like, ‘What the heck!’”

Hovey got out of the vehicle to get it scanned. Needless to say, he was a bit absent-minded!

“I forgot to put the vehicle in park, so I had to hurry up and put it in park. I went in to get it scanned, and yeah, it was a $100,000. I hurried home and told Tammy. She didn’t believe me. So once I showed her, she was in shock. And I was in shock for a couple hours.”

He went to the Iowa lottery headquarters later that day and got his check!

After the shock wore off, Tammy was pretty excited as well. “Trav paid off his truck, and we took care of all of our loans, besides mortgage. I think karma came around. He got a settlement awhile ago. Over Christmas, we helped out some of our family in a financial bind with a few grand to get them on their feet and get their kids gifts. I feel that’s why this happened.”

With the leftover money, the Hoveys plan to remodel their kitchen. He won on the Cash Blast ticket.