SANFORD, N.C. — There’s a particular kind of joy that shows up when life catches you off guard in a good way. It’s loud. It’s clumsy. It ignores personal space. And it makes grown adults do things they normally reserve for weddings and World Cup finals.

That’s basically what happened at a Circle K on Broadway Road last Tuesday morning.

Sheldon McDougald of Broadway walked in like any other day—get in, get out, carry on. He spotted a $20 scratch-off called “$2,000,000 Riches” and thought, sure, why not. People buy these things for the same reason they buy fancy coffee: not because they need it, but because it makes the day feel slightly more interesting.

Then he scratched it.

And suddenly, “slightly more interesting” turned into $2 million.

Here’s what lottery stories don’t capture well: your brain cannot process a number like that in real time. It short-circuits. It tries to negotiate with reality. It assumes you misread something. It looks for the hidden camera.

McDougald’s first response wasn’t a speech or a plan or a calm moment of gratitude.

It was a hug.

He walked straight to the cashier—the person who sold him the ticket—and pulled her into an embrace like she’d personally delivered the money with a bow on top.

“I went up to the clerk and gave her a hug,” he told Lottery officials. “I was just like, ‘It can’t be.’ Two million, I couldn’t believe it.”

That one line—it can’t be—is the most honest part of the whole thing. Because when something huge happens out of nowhere, your mind does not say, “Great, now I will responsibly allocate capital.”

It says, “This isn’t real.”

Even later, when he got to Lottery headquarters in Raleigh to claim the prize, he admitted it still hadn’t fully sunk in. Which makes sense. A win like that doesn’t land like a message. It lands like weather.

And the timing? According to McDougald, the timing was perfect.

“It’s always a good time to win some money,” he said, laughing.

At headquarters he was given the usual choice: take the prize as a long, slow drip—$100,000 a year for 20 years—or take the one-time lump sum of $1.2 million.

He took the lump sum. Most people do. Not because it’s always the best financial move, but because humans hate waiting, even when waiting pays.

After federal and state taxes, he walked away with $864,126.

“It feels good,” he said. “Anybody can win.”

That’s the part lottery winners always say, and it’s both true and misleading. Yes, anybody can win. But almost everybody doesn’t. The odds of winning any prize in the game are 1 in 3.2, which sounds generous until you remember that “any prize” includes the kind that buys you a tank of petrol and a sandwich.

Still, McDougald hit the top prize. The kind that changes how you breathe when you check your bank account.

He says he plans to invest the winnings and use the money to take care of his family—the sensible, grown-up answer that shows up after the adrenaline leaves the body.

And while he’s now out of the running, the scratch-off game isn’t finished yet. After his win, there’s one top prize of $2 million still unclaimed out of the four that existed when the game launched in May 2023. There are also two second-tier prizes of $100,000 left (out of eight), and two third-tier prizes of $10,000 left (out of 24).

But the real story isn’t the remaining prizes.

It’s that for a few minutes in a convenience store in Sanford, North Carolina, a man scratched a piece of cardboard and reality cracked open—just enough for pure, uncomplicated joy to pour out.