A caring mother drained her life savings to pay for her daughter’s cancer treatments.
Then, just one day after the regimens ended, she won $2 million in the lottery.
Geraldine Gimblet of Lakeland, Florida, stopped by the Pipkin Road Beverage Castle gas station there when she decided to play the lottery.
“At first the gas station clerk thought there were no tickets left, but I asked him to double check because I like the crossword games the best. He found the last one,” she told the Florida Lottery.
The 74-year-old played a $2 Million Bonus Cashword scratch-off ticket — costing $10 — and was shocked to find that she had won the top prize.
“I just didn’t know. I was like, ‘Are you sure? Would you check this on your phone?’ And I won,” Gimblet, 74, told “Good Morning America.”
“I’ve been scratching for a long time. Every single day, I bring these Scratch-offs in my pockets.”
Gimblet’s win was especially meaningful due to the emotional timing.
“The day before my mom bought this ticket, I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer,” her daughter, Lawrencina Jackson, shared with the Florida Lottery.
“My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick. I’m just so happy for her!”
“Her doing what she did just meant so much to me,” Jackson said told “GMA.” “I don’t even see where I can replace it. I just have to keep loving her, maybe that’ll help.”
But the loving mother said that she didn’t even think twice about using her money to cover her daughter’s treatments.
“I really didn’t think about it,” she said. “I just did what I had to do.”
Gimblet claimed her $2 million prize at the Lottery Headquarters in Tallahassee with her daughter and granddaughter in tow.
According to the Florida Lottery, Gimblet opted for a one-time, lump-sum payment, meaning she took home just over $1.6 million.
The Bonus Cashword game was first launched in May 2022 and features eight $2 million top prizes, plus 20 second-tier prizes of $100,000.
The game’s overall odds of winning are 1-in-3.12.
Scratch-off games comprised approximately 77% of Florida’s lottery ticket sales from 2021 to 2022 and have generated more than $17.69 billion for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund (EETF) since their inception, according to the state lottery.
Gimblet isn’t the only recent lucky winner: California resident Edwin Castro became a millionaire overnight in February after claiming the $2 billion Powerball prize he won last year.
He added a whopping $997.6 million to his bank account when he nabbed the largest lottery prize in US history in November 2022.
The 30-year-old was recently spotted tooling around in his vintage $250,000 Porsche and walking out of a California bank — with a huge smile on his face.