By Jonathan Lloyd -
NBC Los Angeles
Six years ago Lucia Forseth lived on the street without a home to take refuge.
Now the life of this woman from Contra Costa County in California has changed drastically: at the beginning of the year she bought a scratch card from the state lottery while refueling at a Walmart shopping center in Pittsburgh, northeast of Oakland.
He had to look at the ticket twice to make sure his eyes weren't lying to him about the prize he'd won.
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"I only bought one ticket," Forseth explained to state lottery officials, "I closed my eyes and picked that one, and it came out a winner."
"At first I thought he had won another free ticket, but I checked again and it said he had won five million dollars," he added.
The little scratch was the cherry on top of a year of good news, he said.
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"Six years ago I was homeless. This year I'm getting married, I'm going to get my associate's degree and I've made five million dollars," Forseth said.
"You never imagine that you have a chance of winning. It's something that just happens randomly. Having been homeless for only six years, I never thought something like this could happen to someone like me," said Forseth, who plans to use the money to buy a new house and invest.