Coworkers split $50,000 after boss gives them lottery tickets for Christmas

Christmas came early for 21 Kentucky coworkers whose boss bought them lottery scratch-off tickets as a last-minute holiday gift.

‘Tis the season for giving, right? So Sheila Colter, a shift supervisor at the Medical Center at Bowling Green, had ordered gifts for her coworkers online before their office Christmas party.

But the party was scheduled for the first week of December, and the gifts didn’t arrive in time.

“So, I decided to get scratch-offs instead,” she told the Kentucky Lottery.

Colter gave her employees scratch-off tickets and a few $30 tickets to share, one of which won $50.

That spurred the coworkers to play again, figuring the more (money), the merrier.

“We kept playing as a group,” said Colter who lives in Bowling Green. “I would stop on the way to work, and we kept winning.”

One of the tickets that she purchased was a $50 Millionaire Club Scratch-off. That ticket won $100 so on Dec. 8 she bought two more – one of which ended up winning the group a whopping $50,000.

“We were all so excited,” she said “I was on the floor.”

According to the Kentucky Lottery, the group went home with about $36,000 after taxes, which will give each employee $1,750 each.

Colter says she plans to put her winnings towards her Christmas shopping.

Winnie Beckman, Colter’s coworker, said she’ll use her winnings to defray medical expenses for her mother, who was recently diagnosed with cancer.

“This will help a lot,” she said. “And I will never forget this.”

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