A Portsmouth woman won $2 million on her lunch break and went back to work like nothing happened

A Portsmouth woman having a rough day at work used her lunch break to buy a $20 Platinum 7s ticket, and it resulted in winning the game's top prize of $2 million, the Virginia Lottery said.

She bought the ticket at Love Food Mart, 298 W. Bay Ave. in Norfolk, and scratched it in the store. Then she went back to her job. "I had to go back to work and act like nothing happened!" she told lottery officials.

She chose to stay anonymous, an option Virginia now allows for any lottery prize. She also passed on the full $2 million annuity, paid over 30 years, and took the one-time cash option of $952,000 before taxes. That is 47.6 cents on the dollar for the cash option.

Hers was the first of the game's three top prizes. Platinum 7s was one of four Virginia scratch-offs launched September 1, and about 20% of it has sold so far.

The top-prize odds of 1 in 408,000 are unusually short for a $2 million ticket, and the reason is size. Platinum 7s was printed with only about 1.22 million tickets. By comparison, Missouri's $20 $2,000,000 Bankroll also has a $2 million top prize but has printed around 3.27 million tickets, putting its top prize near 1 in 1.64 million.

The game returns 75.5% of sales as prizes, counting the top prize at its cash value, right in line with the 75.4% average for Virginia's $20 tickets. It rates 84.5 on our ValueScore™, first among the state's ten active $20 games, helped by having most of its prizes still unclaimed.

The winner lives in Portsmouth. The city received more than $22.2 million in lottery money for K-12 schools last fiscal year, the lottery said. Statewide, the Virginia Lottery raised more than $914 million for K-12 education in fiscal 2026.

Sources

Virginia Lottery: Latest winners