Woman moving from Pocatello wins $100K

A family moving from Pocatello to Boise is $100,000 richer.

Last week, Heather Palacios was moving her family from Pocatello to Boise when she pulled off Interstate 84 and stopped at the Traveler’s Oasis in Eden for refreshments and gasoline for her moving truck. She also picked up a couple of Cashword Combo scratch tickets from the Idaho Lottery and put them in her purse without scratching them.

About 100 miles down the road, she stopped at the Pilot Travel Center in Mountain Home to see if she had won. She scratched only the bar codes on both tickets from the Traveler’s Oasis and checked them.

“The first one was a $15 winner. When the clerk scanned the second one, she told me I needed to take it to Boise to claim it,” said Palacios in a news release from the Idaho Lottery. “I didn’t know how much it was worth, so I scratched it right there in the store in Mountain Home. It was a $100,000 winner!”

Palacios was moving to Boise to complete her college degree and start a new job. She was worried her husband was going to have to commute between Pocatello and Boise until the family could get settled financially.

“This is a big relief, because now I can join the family in Boise, too,” said her husband, Hector Palacios.

The Palacios’ win is the sixth $100,000 or higher winning lottery ticket sold in the Magic Valley in the past six months – more than any other region in Idaho. Combined, those six winning tickets amount to $1.8 million.

For its part in selling the winning ticket, the Traveler’s Oasis in Eden will receive a bonus from the Idaho Lottery of $10,000.