Teachers Win $1 Million Powerball Jackpot and Hide Winning Ticket in Math Textbook: 'I Knew It Would Be Safe There' A group of 30 educators purchased the ticket at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky.
By Emily Rella
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For some students, there's nothing more daunting than math class.
So after a retired teacher realized she and 29 of her colleagues had a winning Powerball ticket, she knew there was a perfect place to keep the ticket safe — page 200 of an old math textbook.
Thirty educators at Rector A. Jones Middle School from Florence, Kentucky, purchased a winning $1 million Powerball ticket on Saturday, January 27, after playing the game together for eight years.
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When the group's organizer, a retired teacher who is remaining anonymous, realized they had pooled the correct numbers, she promptly put the ticket in the book until the group was ready to go down to the Kentucky Lottery on Tuesday afternoon.
"No one looks in a math book," she joked about hiding the ticket to the Kentucky Lottery. "I knew it would be safe there… I have checked this a thousand times."
After taxes, each of the "Jones 30" — the nickname for the group which consists of school nurses, administrators, counselors, and teachers — took home $24,000 each.
"We all taught at the same school at one point or another," one of the anonymous winners said. "Some have moved on or retired but we still continue to do it. We've remained buddies for all of these years."
The ticket was purchased at a Kroger grocery store in Hebron, Kentucky, which will receive a $10,000 prize for selling the winning ticket.
Purchasing lottery tickets as a group and deciding to split the earnings is a bold strategy that has paid off for others looking to win big in the past.
Related: Virginia Woman Hits Jackpot in Second Lottery Win That Week
In December, a group of coworkers who were also from Kentucky won $50,000 in shared scratch-off tickets that their boss had purchased for them as a holiday present.
The employees split the earnings with their boss and each took home $1,750.
