Doralee Preston-Price of Fayetteville said a bar of soap led her to a $200,000 lottery prize.

Her good fortune started Monday when she stopped by the Food Lion on Cliffdale Road in Fayetteville to pick up some groceries.

“When I left the store, I realized I’d forgotten to get the Dove soap I needed,” Preston-Price said. “I figured it would be cheaper to go to the Dollar Tree nearby. They were closed, so instead I went back to Food Lion.”

While she was there, she decided to get some lottery tickets. She bought some holiday scratch-off tickets and a $5 Mega Bucks ticket. She forgot about them until Wednesday afternoon while she was folding laundry and watching the movie ‘Step Up’.

“I remembered I still had the scratch-off tickets in my purse,” Preston-Price said. “I scratched the first ticket and didn’t win anything. I scratched this ticket and got through the first row but went back to watching the movie because it was a dance scene. I almost threw the ticket away, but then something just said, ‘Look back down.’”

She finished scratching the ticket and couldn’t believe what she saw. She called her mother to meet her and look at the ticket.

“When she told me I was looking at it right, I lost it,” Preston-Price said.

The two of them immediately drove to lottery headquarters in Raleigh to claim the prize. After required state and federal tax withholdings, she took home $141,003. She plans to use some of the money to take her husband and ten-year-old son on a Disney cruise.

Mega Bucks launched in November 2017 with seven top prizes of $200,000. Two top prizes remain.

Ticket sales from games like Mega Bucks make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $650 million a year for education. For details on how lottery funds have made a difference in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website.