Virginia woman wins $50,000 Powerball with numbers from a fortune cookie

Tierra Barley’s massive $50,000 Powerball prize came from an unexpected source. The woman from Henrico chose to use the numbers she had previously discovered in a fortune cookie and five of them appeared in the drawing on May 8.

Barley purchased the ticket at the Varina Superstore Supermarket on Darbytown Road in Henrico, and Powerball reported that she almost misplaced it before the drawing took place.

She recalled leaving the ticket in the shop after purchasing it and going to the park with her daughter. When she came back, she noticed that someone else was purchasing Powerball tickets. Ironically, that individual assisted in getting Barley’s ticket back.

The Powerball number was 5, while the winning numbers in the drawing were 7-41-43-44-51. Barley’s ticket matched four of the first five numbers, as well as the Powerball number.

As stated by Powerball, the overall odds of winning any Powerball prize are 1 in 25 and the odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.

“All Virginia Lottery profits go to K-12 education in Virginia. Ms. Barley lives in Henrico County, which received more than $30.7 million in Lottery funds for K-12 education last fiscal year. In Fiscal Year 2023, the Lottery raised more than $867 million for K-12 education, making up approximately 10 percent of Virginia’s total K-12 school budget,” the organization added.