Modesto man 'mesmerized' as scratching revealed big lottery win

Fingers crossed for a couple hundred dollars, a Modesto man told the California Lottery he "almost fell over" when he won the top prize of $750,000 playing a Scratchers ticket.

Christopher Allen, 47, bought a $10 Mystery Crossword Scratchers ticket at Dennis's Sav-On Liquors, 2409 Moffet Road in Ceres, after dropping off his wife at work one recent day.

He began scratching the ticket while still in the store, the Lottery said in a news release, and the winning letter combinations appeared. "I was mesmerized," Allen said in the release. "I almost fell over myself. ... You just want to pinch yourself. No matter how many times people ask how you feel, you can’t really explain it!"

Having convinced himself he'd actually won, he called his wife. "You’re kidding. No way. Not possible,” Allen remembers her saying. "You’re lying to me. This can’t happen to us.”

Allen, who works in the asphalt business, told Lottery officials he wasn’t playing to strike it rich. Better to keep expectations low than be disappointed over and over again.

Now that he's won big, he said, he and his family are determined to make the best of it with thoughtful planning. “I don’t want to do anything to mess it up,” Allen said in the news release. “It’s only gonna happen once in a lifetime.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2018 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Modesto man 'mesmerized' as scratching revealed big lottery win."