Melrose couple wins $50,000 lottery

A Melrose couple who won $50,000 from a scratch lottery ticket Sunday plan to install new floors in their home and share their winnings with their children.

Mary Vineyard told lottery officials she was watching TV and scratching off tickets her husband purchased that night.

“Real quick, I saw that the same letters were scattered all over the card,” she is quoted as saying in a press release from New Mexico Lottery.

“I knew it had to be a winner, but I didn't think it was a big winner.”

Dean Vineyard told lottery officials he went to the store that night to buy his wife her lottery tickets, $3 crossword puzzles, but they only had one left.

“I splurged,” he said. “I got the $5 game — bought six tickets.”

The lottery puts odds at winning the Crossword Doubler at one in 160,000.

The Vineyards said they will continue to play and plan to “win big again” because their grandchildren are counting on Legislative Lottery Scholarships to attend school, the release said.

The Vineyard’s winning ticket was purchased from Allsup’s on State Road 311, near Cannon Air Force Base.

It is the third ticket sold in Clovis this summer to be worth $50,000 or more.

Lottery spokeswoman Linda Hamlin said in May a Grady resident won $200,000 and in July a Clovis woman won $50,000.

“Sometimes good fortune strikes over and over again in the same place,” she said.

The lottery has raised $446.2 million since 1996 for education and more than 61,000 students have attended college on lottery scholarships, the release said.

In Curry County, as of the spring 2009 semester, 1,600 high school graduates and GED recipients have received $4.9 million in lottery scholarships.