Woman wins big with losing lottery tickets

Rhonda Bryant sells a lot of lottery tickets at her tobacco store in Morrilton, but that's not why the Lottery Commission knows her by name.

They know her because she's won more prizes playing the lottery's second-chance game, called "Points for Prizes," than anyone else in the history of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.

So how does she get all those tickets? Customers either leave them in a box at the front of her store or for bulk deliveries, they'll just hand her a bag full of losing scratch-offs.

"This is a bag that a customer brought me in yesterday," said Bryant while holding one of those bags. "He saves his tickets for me."

Want to know what Bryant has to show for all those so-called losing tickets? Try more than 350 prizes, including flat-screen tv's, electric guitars, and mp3 players.

"It gets pretty junky sometimes," she laughed.

Bad news for Bryant though. The lottery has a new policy.

Players used to be able to enter as many losing lottery tickets as they wanted, and Bryant would enter thousands every week. Now though, the lottery put a cap on it. Each individual person can only enter 200 tickets per week.

Lottery Public Affairs Director Julie Baldridge says the cap is meant to level the playing field and not give store owners an advantage over normal players.

"We just wanted to be sure that it was a fair system," she said.

So how's Bryant managing with that new fair system?

"My husband has an account, I have an account, my mom has an account," she laughed.

Don't be confused though, Bryant is not laughing all the way to the bank. What she actually does with all of her winnings is donate them, mostly to churches and schools.

"I love to help people," she said. "It's what we're supposed to do."