Winner, winner, chicken dinner – literally.

A Virginia man recently went to the grocery store to pick up some chicken – and came back half a million dollars richer.

Russell Gomes, of South Boston, Virginia, went to the Food Lion grocery store recently to buy chicken, he told the Virginia Lottery’s website. 

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South Boston is located in southern Virginia, about 20 miles north of the North Carolina border. 

While he was shopping, he decided to buy a scratch-off ticket – specifically, the Virginia Lottery’s “Magnificent 7s” scratcher.

Gomes, a tractor-trailer driver, went to scratch off his ticket in the store’s parking lot – and got the surprise of a lifetime.

 “I really didn’t believe it!” he told Lottery officials when he redeemed his winning ticket on May 3. “It feels great!

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Gomes told the Virginia Lottery that he plans on using his winnings to pay off a vacation that he had already scheduled. 

Magnificent 7s, the game Gomes played, has prizes ranging from $20 to $500,000, said the Virginia Lottery.

Gomes told the Virginia Lottery that he will be using his winnings to go on vacation.  (iStock / iStock)

There are two additional $500,000 top prizes that have not been claimed, they said.

The Virginia Lottery was established in 1987, after Virginians voted in favor of creating a state-operated lottery. 

The first tickets were sold the following year, said the Virginia Lottery’s website.

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Since 1999, the Virginia Lottery’s profits have supported K-12 public education in the commonwealth, said its website.

In 2023, this amounted to more than $867 million that went to public education in the state. 

The Virginia Lottery’s profits support schools in the commonwealth.  ( Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)

This was about 10% of the commonwealth’s budget for K-12 schools, said the Virginia Lottery’s website. 

These funds are distributed throughout Virginia’s counties. 

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Gomes lives in Halifax County, noted the Virginia Lottery’s website, which received “more than $4.4 million in Lottery funds for K-12 education last fiscal year.”

During the 2023 fiscal year, the Virginia Lottery had sales of $4.6 billion. 

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Of those sales, more than $3.5 billion was distributed to lottery winners and the retailers who sold the winning tickets, said the lottery’s website.   

Leading up to Tuesday’s West Virginia primary, three of the Republican candidates for governor have been trying to outdo each other in proving their opposition to transgender rights. 

In TV ads running in West Virginia, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Chris Miller and Moore Capito have been accusing each other of harboring transgender sympathies while touting their own efforts to restrict LGBTQ rights.

“Unfortunately, these are not solutions-based campaigns,” the ACLU of West Virginia told CBS News in a statement. “They’re built instead on demonizing already vulnerable people to score cheap political points.”

Morrisey’s campaign website describes him as “one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates against biological males playing sports with women” and says he’s a staunch supporter of the West Virginia Save Women’s Sports Act of 2021, which required that each athlete’s participation in official or unofficial school-sanctioned sporting and athletic events be “based on the athlete’s biological sex as indicated on the athlete’s original birth certificate issued at the time of birth.” Morrisey recently announced that he plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the legislation’s constitutionality after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the law in mid-April.  

In response to these efforts, the ACLU of West Virginia told CBS News, “The state has sunk untold resources into keeping one girl from being on her middle school’s track team, including asking the U.S. Supreme Court to treat the matter as an emergency on par with national security”

A super PAC supporting Morrisey, Black Bear, released an ad targeting GOP candidate Chris Miller, claiming Miller “looked the other way as pro-transgender events happened on his watch” while he was a board member at Marshall UniveCrsity in West Virginia. 

Miller, the owner of an auto dealership group in the state, has vowed to “protect our kids from the radical transgender agenda” if elected governor. He hit back with an ad accusing Morrisey of previously lobbying for a transgender clinic dispensing gender transition medication to children in New York before he was elected state attorney general. 

Capito, who previously served in West Virginia’s House of Delegates, touts his fight to ban transgender surgeries from being performed on minors and to outlaw puberty blockers. He released an ad called “Girl Dad” that portrays a fictional race. In it, a runner who appears to be a less athletic male “mid-pack finisher” easily outpaces harder-working female runners as the ad narration accuses “woke leftists” of destroying women’s sports. Capito’s campaign website says he’ll “make sure biological men are NEVER allowed to be in the locker rooms with our daughters.” 

So far, more than a dozen Republican-led states have filed lawsuits to block the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations, which would protect transgender students from discrimination in schools receiving government funding. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced last month the 1972 law protecting sex-based discrimination extends to “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” The new regulations are slated to take effect Aug. 1.

The GOP attorneys general who are suing the administration, including Morrisey, allege the administration’s changes extend the coverage of Title IX further than allowed, calling them “sweeping and unlawful.”

The uptick in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric among Republican gubernatorial candidates and state legislators in West Virginia has attracted the notice of the ACLU, which tracked 29 anti-LGBTQ bills there. The organization notes that while not all of the bills would become law, “they all cause harm for LGBTQ people.” 

The West Virginia legislature adjourned in March after passing just one of those bills, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who is now running for the U.S. Senate seat left open by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement. The new law bans transgender and non-binary West Virginians from changing their sex on their driver’s license. 

For the 17th time in the last 19 NCAA Tournaments, Virginia men’s tennis has advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championships. The Cavaliers bounced back after dropping the doubles point with strong singles play across the board, powering No. 3 Virginia (25-5) to a 4-1 victory over South Carolina (19-15) in the Super Regional round of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Tennis Championship on Friday in Charlottesville.

After rain delayed the start of the match by an hour, the Gamecocks proved to be the better team in doubles play, as Sean Daryabeigi and Casey Hoole handily defeated Dylan Dietrich and Alexander Kiefer 6-1 on court 3. UVA recovered on court 1 with Chris Rodesch and Jeffrey von der Schulenburg beating Toby Samuel and James Story 6-4. That left things to be decided on court 2, where Jelani Sarr and Lucas da Silva defeated Edoardo Graziani and James Hopper 6-4 to clinch the doubles point for South Carolina.

Mans Dahlberg was the first to record a point for the Cavaliers, beating Lucas da Silva 6-1, 7-5 on court 6. Inaki Montes put UVA in front with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Casey Hoole on court 2 and then Dylan Dietrich won a three-set match against James Story 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 on court 3 to make it 3-1 in favor of Virginia. Jeffrey von der Schulenburg clinched the victory for UVA, posting a 7-5, 6-3 win over Sean Daryabeigi on court 4.

Chris Rodesch and Toby Samuel, who are both ranked in the top 10 in the ITA men’s singles rankings, were tied at three games apiece in the third set and Alexander Kiefer was trailing Jelani Sarr on court 5 when play was suspended.

“Really proud of our guys in terms of the way we competed, especially after doubles,” said UVA head coach Andres Pedroso. “South Carolina just outplayed us in doubles today, and our guys were unfazed. You could see it on all the courts. Every guy was just locked in, and they knew what they had to do. We still had tough moments in the middle of singles, but they just stayed focused and stayed the course and that’s what this team does. So a good win for us. Our total focus now is on Stillwater.”

With the win, Virginia avenged an earlier loss to South Carolina this season, as the Gamecocks defeated the Cavaliers in a 4-3 thriller back on January 21st in Charlottesville.

Another familiar foe awaits UVA in the quarterfinals, as Virginia is set to face ACC rival Wake Forest on Thursday, May 16th at Greenwood Tennis Center in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Cavaliers defeated the Demon Deacons 4-3 back on March 1st in Charlottesville.