#Man wins $250,000 lottery soon after he loses job and dad to COVID-19

A Charlotte, North Carolina preschool teacher recently lost his job, and then his father to the coronavirus — but on Christmas Eve, he won $250,000 in a scratch-off lottery.

“I fell to my knees at the gas pump,” Joe Camp said of scratching off his prize, describing his turn in fortune in a news release from the North Carolina Lottery.

Camp, a dad and grandfather, says he’ll use the money he won on his lucky “Gold Rush” ticket on his family.

His plans include buying a new home he can pass down to his grandkids, and paying for his daughter’s education.

“What I plan on doing with my winnings is having a future for my daughter,” he said. “I want to have something for us. I never had anything.

“No one passed anything down, and that’s what I want to do.”

His run of bad luck included getting laid off in September from a teaching job he’d held for two decades, and then losing his father to COVID-19 just a month later. He’d taken a job at a car dealership when his luck turned.

“It put me in a dark place,” Camp said. “But I have a lot of friends and family that just told me to keep sticking in there, keep believing in myself.”