Woman Won $150,000 in the Lottery — and She’s Going to Donate It All to Charity

A Virginia woman just won $150,000 in the lottery — and she plans to donate all of it to charity.

Carrie Edwards of Midlothian picked her numbers online and matched four of the first five numbers, plus the Powerball number, in the Sept. 8 Virginia Lottery drawing, according to WWBT. Normally, this would have won her $50,000, but Edwards had paid an extra dollar for Power Play, which tripled her prize.

Edwards said she usually doesn’t play the lottery online, and she even asked her phone’s talking ChatGPT app to help her pick her numbers.

“I’m like, ChatGPT, talk to me […] Do you have numbers for me?” she said during a press conference shared by the Virginia Lottery.

She found out she had won two days later.

“I’m sitting in a meeting, and I look at my phone and it says, ‘Please collect your lottery winnings.’ And I thought, ‘I think it’s a scam. I know I didn’t win,’” she recalled.

Once she verified the win, Edwards knew exactly what she wanted to do.

“As soon as that divine windfall happened and came down upon my shoulders, I knew exactly what I needed to do with it. I knew I needed to give it all away because I’ve been so blessed, and I want this to be an example of how other people, when they’re blessed, can bless others,” she said.

Edwards plans to divide the winnings equally among her three favorite charities.

“The first [charity] is the AFTD (The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration),” she explained. Her late husband died of the disease, which causes early-onset dementia, in 2024.

The second charity is Shalom Farms, a regenerative farm in Richmond.

“It’s the greatest organization because they understand that we are all responsible for helping each other, helping our community, and helping those who don’t have what we have. They focus on this through their food justice and food equity program,” she said.

Her final charity choice is the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, which is “very near and dear” to her because her father was a fighter pilot, and it was his favorite charity.

Edwards said she felt “so blessed” and knew immediately how she wanted to use the money.

“Because it’s a windfall I didn’t expect, and it’s certainly going to help those in need,” she concluded.