Eastern Iowa Man Almost Throws $10,000 In The Trash

Call me a weirdo; I don't care. This is how I want to find out I won $10,000 from the Iowa Lottery. It's just a cool story, and it's like finding money in your pants after doing laundry—well, not exactly like that, but similar.

If this doesn't encourage you always to double-check your lottery tickets, even if you think you lost, then I don't know what will. You might just be throwing away huge sums of money like this dude in Eastern Iowa.

Eastern Iowa Man Almost Throws Away $10,000

Check your Iowa Lottery tickets. Even if you think you didn't win the jackpot, you might have won a large amount of money that could really go a long way. Double-checking a lottery ticket he thought was a loser only to find out it was $10,000 is exactly what happened to Jordan Miller of Davenport.

"I never came so close to throwing away $10,000 in my life," Jordan Miller told Iowa Lottery officials.

Jordan did exactly what we all did right before Christmas: He bought a Mega Millions lottery ticket when it won over $1 billion on Christmas Eve. He bought his winning ticket at Smokin' Joe's, 1606 W. Locust St. in Davenport.

Miller said he woke up the next morning to see that nobody had won the jackpot, so he didn't even bother to check his ticket. He let that ticket sit on his fridge and didn't think about it again until a couple of weeks later.

"I was getting ready to go do errands when I saw it sitting there. I was going to throw it away because I thought it was junk," Miller said. "I remembered I had the lottery app on my phone so I decided to scan it real quick. It popped up and said I won $10,000." He matched 4 of the white balls and the Mega Ball to win that big prize.

Miller 31, a firefighter, said he and his wife will use some of the winnings to travel this year. He said the remainder of his winnings will go into savings. As I wrote this up I also realized that his wife and my wife work together so hopefully, we'll get some luck, too.

Miller said he usually plays Mega Millions when the jackpots get really big, and has learned a valuable lesson for next time. "Always check your ticket," he said.