He got the fortune cookie from his granddaughter.
Seems like fortune cookies bring good luck after all.
Charles W. Jackson Jr. of Cumberland County, North Carolina, won the $344.6 million after he purchased a Powerball ticket using numbers from a fortune cookie given to him from his granddaughter.
"I don't know what to do with it. I hope it don't change me a lot," he told WRAL. "I'm still going to wear my jeans — maybe newer ones."
The 66-year-old retiree explained that his granddaughter had gone to a Vietnamese restaurant recently and brought him back a fortune cookie.
Inspired by the numbers on the fortune, he purchased a ticket from a grocery store in Hope Mills ahead of the Saturday draw.
At first glance, he thought he had gotten all but one number and was ecstatic to win $50,000.
Jackson told his wife the good news and began driving to Raleigh to declare his winnings, but when he took another look at the numbers, he realized, “Dang, I got them all.”
He didn’t discover how much money the jackpot was until he looked it up on the internet, since he doesn’t pay attention to the news.
Jackson accepted his winnings as a lump sum worth $223 million and plans to spend the money on a trip to Vietnam with his wife and to donate a large portion to charity.
“It still hasn’t come over me yet, how much — all that money,” Jackson said. “You play to win, but you don’t ever expect to win.”
He also plans to give $1 million to his brother, with whom he had a pact that whoever wins big will cut the other sibling in on the winnings.
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