Friends gift turned out to be $200K prize for a Virginia woman

A friend’s gift turned into a lottery prize for a Virginia mom — and now, she wants to help her son.

Deborah Williams said she plans to put her six-figure winnings toward her son’s college tuition.

Williams won the prize as her son was getting ready to leave for college.

To mark the milestone, her friend gave her a ticket for the 50X the Money scratch-off game, the Virginia Lottery wrote in a Sept. 8 news release.

“We scratched it,” Williams, an Afton resident, told lottery officials.

“We looked at it many, many times.”

It turns out, the ticket scored Williams a $200,000 prize. Officials in their news release didn’t say how much money she kept after taxes.

Her lucky ticket was sold for $20 at Blue Ridge Grocery in Nellysford, roughly 100 miles northwest of Richmond. It’s not the first time a gift has given someone a big reason to celebrate.

In North Carolina, a 71-year-old man sat in silence after he received a jackpot-winning ticket for his birthday, McClatchy News reported in December.