Bob CollinsScott Chiples, of Stoddard, Wis., which is south of La Crosse, thinks Celeste Davis got a raw deal from the Wisconsin lottery.
Davis won $50 on a scratch-off, matching three of four winning numbers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jim Stingl reports. But the clerk in the store refused to pay because a bar code on the ticket was missing.
The lottery staff recreated every ticket sent to the store and couldn’t find one that matched Davis’ ticket. So they sent her $5 to repay her for the cost of the ticket and considered the matter closed.
Chiples didn’t. He sent her a check for $100.
“I said, ‘Where in the heck is Stoddard anyway?’ He says outside La Crosse. It’s beautiful country,” Davis told Stingl. “We had a conversation like we’ve been knowing each other quite a while. He said, ‘Knowing you made my day better.'”
“It’s the right thing to do, restoring one woman’s faith in the sense of fair play,” Chiples said.
The check was late getting to its recipient. Chiples sent it to Stingl, who had written about Davis’ plight a year ago, but he was on leave from his newspaper caring for his wife, who died of breast cancer last month.
