New Jersey

NJ Nurse Wins Lottery, Calls for Help: ‘I May Be Having A Heart Attack'

When Dawn Jones realized she'd just hit the lottery, it was definitely a moment. She picked up the phone and called a fellow nurse.

"My heart feels like it's coming out of my chest, I may be having a heart attack," she told him.

"Just breathe," he chuckled.

The Trenton nurse and mother is probably breathing a lot easier after claiming her cash.

Jones won New Jersey's CASH4LIFE lottery, which pays $1,000 a day for the rest of your life. She opted to take the money up front, which amounts to $7 million before taxes.

Every Monday, Jones buys lottery tickets for five different games. She plays the very same numbers for each game because they're personally significant.

That's how Jones knew without even checking that she had the winning ticket for the Aug. 8 drawing. But just to be sure she grabbed the ticket and asked her daughter to come over and read the numbers out loud.

"Then came the silent scream," said Jones, who plans to pay off her student loans, help put her daughters through college and then get started on her bucket list.

Oh, and work? Jones is still providing long-term acute care at two different facilities in New Jersey. She didn't even take the next day off to savor her new multi-millionaire status.

"I thought about calling out rich," Jones said, "But I know that a lot of people depend on me, so I went to work."

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