Greensboro woman wins first $200,000 prize in new lottery game

Nicole Hodges of Greensboro turned a routine stop at Shikotare Express Mart on Randleman Road into a six-figure windfall, winning the first $200,000 top prize in North Carolina’s new Diamonds and Dollars scratch-off game. After state and federal tax withholding, Hodges collected $144,021 at North Carolina Lottery headquarters on Thursday, money she said she plans to use to help her husband start a food truck business.

The win came from Hodges’ first-ever purchase of a $5 ticket, a small gamble that paid off the moment she realized what she had in her hands. The lottery said the Diamonds and Dollars game debuted this week with four $200,000 top prizes, and three of those prizes still remain unclaimed. For a Greensboro neighborhood store on a busy stretch of Randleman Road, the ticket also meant a local business became the place where the game’s first big prize was sold.

Hodges’ plan gives the prize an economic meaning that goes beyond a lucky headline. A food truck can be one of the fastest ways to enter Greensboro’s mobile-food market, but it still takes real capital to get rolling. The money would have to stretch across a truck, kitchen equipment, supplies, insurance, and the permits and approvals needed to operate in Guilford County and around Greensboro. In that sense, the lottery check does not just add household cash; it can change the math of whether a family idea becomes a working small business.

North Carolina’s lottery also carries a broader public-finance role that helps explain why prizes like this draw so much attention. More than $1 billion in lottery money went to education in fiscal year 2023-24, and the lottery has raised more than $10 billion for education in North Carolina since it began. That backdrop gives even a neighborhood win statewide resonance, especially when the winnings are headed toward entrepreneurship rather than a one-time splurge.

Greensboro has seen a similar story before. In June 2025, David Fitzgerald won a $200,000 scratch-off prize at Express Mart on West Market Street and said he would use the money to help take care of his granddaughter’s future. Taken together, the two wins show how a convenience-store ticket can ripple through family finances, small-business plans, and the local retail strips where those tickets are sold.