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(CNN) - An Oregon man beat cancer. Then he did it again. Then he won the lottery.
He seems to be his own lucky charm.
Stu MacDonald, of Bend, buys tickets from the Oregon Lottery every week, and every week, his wife Claudia tells him to "buy the winning ticket."
He forgot to tell him on September 7, the Oregon Lottery said. But he ended up buying a winning ticket worth 4.6 million dollars.
"I am a very lucky guy," he said in a statement. “I survived cancer twice and here I am. This is incredible".
After taxes, he took home about $ 1.5 million. The coffee where he bought the ticket got a $ 46,000 sales bonus, the lottery said.
An Oregon Lottery spokesperson told CNN that MacDonald had not accepted interviews or images of him were disclosed, so you'll have to imagine the smile on his face when he learned of his earnings.
Winning the lottery is rare. As 1 in 300 million rare
MacDonald is lucky, in fact. Winning the lottery is extremely rare.
The odds of an average person winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350. That is approximately 292,200 times less likely to be born with extra fingers (the odds are approximately 1 in 500).
The unlikely odds do not prevent people from trying to seek luck. For a Canadian man, it worked: after playing the same numbers for 30 years, he finally won $ 60 million in October. He waited almost 10 months to claim his earnings, which he said he saved for a new home and family vacation.
Lottery
