WASHINGTON BOROUGH, NJ (Warren County) – It is just a couple days from somebody hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, which is awarded to the NFL’s Super Bowl champion. Perhaps that might be why the legendary coach’s wisdom comes to mind so easily this week.
“Winners never quit,” the Packers legend, who coached high school football in Englewood, is credited with saying.
Indeed. One recent Cash 5 jackpot winner certainly has that aphorism etched into their mind-set.
“I’ve played the Lottery every day since the 1980s. I’m still going to play,” the Warren County winner said recently while claiming a $1,699,120 jackpot prize won Jan. 28 at the Krauser’s Food Store in Washington Borough. “I still feel lucky.”
The intuition is appropriate. The victory came at the start of the Lunar New Year—the year of the snake, for which intuition is an attributed characteristic. The winning play was quick pick among three other plays and drew the winning numbers of 11, 18, 22, 35 and 45. The Xtra was 4 and the Bullseye was 45. The retailer will receive a $2,000 bonus.
“I kept looking at my tickets on the fridge, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at,” said the winner, who came close this past summer in the Cash 5, winning four of 5 balls for a “few hundred bucks.”
New Jersey now has had at least 80 winners of prizes of more than $10,000 this year. It’s the second big win for a player from Warren County. That’s well ahead of the pace for 2024, when Warren County had five such winners for the entire year. It was also the sixth Jersey Cash 5 jackpot of the year, which is similar to 2024’s pace of nearly 75.
The winner, who does odd home improvement projects, doesn’t have any big plans. Simply put, the money serves as a good backup.
“My body’s killing me from years in construction. I don’t know how much more working I got, my body’s falling apart,” the winner said. Despite aches and pains, the winner has a small rebellious streak that includes pumping their own gas at the station—a cardinal sin in New Jersey.
“I don’t let them do it! A guy broke a nozzle once in my truck! I don’t trust them,” Maybe I can buy a new truck now,” he joked.
