WITHAMS — A mid-January weekend may have seemed longer for Eileen Knobloch of Withams than for most people. State offices were closed Monday for Martin Luther King Day. She had a Virginia Lottery ticket worth $100,000 and she had to wait until Tuesday, the next business day, to redeem it.
“I kept it in a safe over the weekend when the offices were closed,” she told Lottery officials as she claimed her prize.
Knobloch scratched to win the top prize in the Face Cards game. She bought the winning ticket at Corner Videos at 6491 Lankford Highway in Oak Hall, Virginia.
When she discovered she had a top-prize-winning ticket, she told her children first. “They were thrilled to pieces,” she said.
This is the fifth top-prize winner redeemed in the Face Cards game, which means one $100,000 ticket remains unclaimed.
Nearly 95 cents of each dollar spent on the Virginia Lottery by players goes back to the Commonwealth in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retailer commissions. Since 1999, all Virginia Lottery profits have been designated solely to K-12 public school education in the Commonwealth. In that time, the Lottery has turned over more than $4 billion for Virginia’s public schools. The latest annual profits of $439.1 million currently represent about 7 percent of state funding for public education in Virginia. In 21 years, the Lottery has sold more than $21.1 billion in tickets, awarded more than $1.1 billion in retailer commissions and paid more than $11.6 billion in prizes to players.
