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Derik Vanderford|Daily Times Kelly One Stop was the scene of a Union woman's moment of triumph this past weekend when she won $100,000 through the South Carolina Education Lottery. The woman spent $5 on an Instant Carolina 5 lottery ticket and won enough money to buy her first home according to lottery officials.

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COLUMBIA — An investment of $5 earned a Union woman $100,000 and the means to buy a new home.

Holli Armstrong, Public Relations Coordinator for the South Carolina Education Lottery, announced Thursday morning that a Union woman had purchased an Instant Carolina 5 lottery ticket at Kelly One Stop, 1508 Jonesville-Lockhart Highway, Union, last weekend. Armstrong said when the woman scratched off the $5 ticket she discovered she’d beaten the game’s 1 in 500,000 odds to win $147,059. She said that once the taxes on the prize were paid, lottery officials presented the woman with a check for $100,000 earlier this week.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Armstrong said the woman told lottery officials that when she realized she’d won she called her mother, screaming the good news.

“I’m just excited,” the woman, who did not want her identity revealed, said.

Armstrong said the woman told lottery officials she planned to use her winnings to buy a house.

“I’ve wanted a house for the longest time,” the woman, a first-time home buyer, said.

While she purchased the ticket this past weekend, Armstrong said the winner didn’t immediately claim her prize.

“She didn’t claim it right away, she waited for a day off from work,” Armstrong said. “She locked the ticket up, I’m assuming, in a safe until she could get here to claim it.”

Like most winners, Armstrong said the woman claimed her prize in person even though she had the option of getting it by mail.

“Typically, with $100,000 the winners come in to claim and are issued a check,” Armstrong said. “They can mail it, because winnings of $100,000 or less can be mailed, but they usually come in person.”

Kelly One Stop received a commission for selling the claimed ticket.

“The selling bonus is one percent of the prize amount,” Armstrong said. “They got $1,000.”

In addition to the $100,00o paid out to the Union woman, Armstrong said five more Instant Carolina 5 top prizes of $100,000 each remain to be won.

The lottery was established in 2002 to raise funds in support of education. Armstrong said that since the lottery began, more than one million college scholarships and grants have been awarded to South Carolina’s students. In all, more than $2.6 billion has been transferred to support educational programs in the Palmetto State.