Cresco woman wins $50,000

CRESCO - A northern Iowa woman’s holiday travel plans have become a lot easier after winning the lottery this past weekend.

Emily Mohamad of Cresco claimed the ninth of 10 top prizes of $50,000 available in the Iowa Lottery’s “White Ice” scratch game.

Mohamad, 35, said she had been saving money for several weeks in order to travel to Florida to visit her immediate family next month.

“It’s definitely a go now,” Mohamad told lottery employees Monday as she claimed her prize at the lottery’s regional office in Mason City.

Mohamad, who works at Casey’s, said she bought her winning ticket Saturday at Cresco Mart, 202 Second Ave. SW in Cresco. She said she thought it was a little unusual that all of the Winning Numbers in the game were in sequential order and she thought that meant she had a nonwinning ticket. She ended up making one winning match on her ticket for the game’s $50,000 top prize.

“I go and I start scratching the (prize) amount and I saw all these zeroes and I had to keep looking at it,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d scratched a number wrong; I just thought it wasn’t right.”

She said she had her roommate double-check her work and when they agreed that it was a $50,000-winning ticket, Mohamad said she kept her ticket in a safe place until she could claim her prize from the lottery.

“I took a picture of it. So when I told people at my job I showed them the picture, not the real ticket,” Mohamad said. “I didn’t want anyone trying to grab it or drop it.”

White Ice is a $5 scratch game. More details about how to play this game, and the number of prizes still up for grabs in it can be found on the Iowa Lottery’s website, www.ialottery.com.