Powerball ticket worth $1M bought by N.J. mom working as transit supervisor

A married mother from Barnegat is the holder of the lucky $1 million Powerball lottery ticket sold in New Jersey for Saturday's drawing.

Stacey Fiore chose to allow New Jersey Lottery officials to disclose her name, even though winners of big lottery prizes in the state have been allowed to remain anonymous since January 2020.

"I like telling people," Fiore told lottery officials when she claimed her prize this week. "I went to the bank and asked to speak to the manager. I said 'You know somebody won $1 million here in town? Well, that's me!' She was super excited. It's nice to celebrate."

Fiore is a weekly player of both major multi-state lottery games — Powerball and Mega Millions. She bought the second-prize ticket at Quick Stop on Bay Avenue in Barnegat, her Ocean County hometown.

A supervisor with the Metropolitan Transit Authority in Staten Island, New York, Fiore said she usually checks her numbers on the lottery app following the drawing. But, this time she waited until Monday.

She didn't believe the message saying she won. So, she had her husband Greg, a bus driver for the MTA, verify the ticket was a winner.

Fiore said she doesn't have any plans for the money yet, except to perhaps take a vacation. The couple plans to continue working, but her husband joked he might stop working overtime shifts.

Her Powerball ticket is the 10th sold in New Jersey this year to win the second-prize of at least $1 million. In all, 39 people in New Jersey have won $1 million or more playing games that draw numbers, lottery officials said.

Fiore is in her early 50s, according to public records.

Saturday's winning numbers were: . Fiore's ticket didn't have the Powerball number of 16. She had 12, instead. If she had the Powerball number, she'd have won the $92 million jackpot.

The odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are 292,201,388 to 1. A player who buys a $2 ticket has about a 1 in 11,688,053 chance to match five numbers and win at least $1 million, while the odds are 913,129 to 1 to win a third prize of at least $50,000.

The next Powerball drawing on Saturday is worth an estimated $130 million with a cash option of $61.4 million.

Stories by Jeff Goldman

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