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‘We hope that they share it properly,’ owner of Chicopee store where winning ticket sold says of lucky customer

“There’s a lot of need in this area.”

Bob Bolduc speaks to the media outside his store, which sold the jackpot-winning lottery ticket. Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe

By Dialynn Dwyer and Erica Yee

2 minutes to read

The owner of the Chicopee store where the winning ticket for the stunning $758.7 million Powerball jackpot was sold said Thursday he’s happy for his lucky customer and hopes the money is spent wisely.“We hope that they share it properly, also, because there’s a lot of needs in this area,” Bob Bolduc, owner of the chain of Pride stores, told reporters outside the location where the ticket was sold. The press conference followed a morning of confusion after the Massachusetts State Lottery initially said overnight the winning ticket was sold at a Watertown store, only to issue a correction early Thursday that it was purchased at the Pride Station & Store at 27 Montgomery Street in Chicopee. Bolduc said he missed out on all the confusion since he hadn’t seen the initial announcement about the Watertown shop. “The phone started ringing at 8 o’clock,” he said. “And we’re as surprised as everyone else.”The owner of the gas station chain said he plans to donate all the money the store receives from the lottery to local charities. The shop is expected to receive $50,000 from the state lottery for selling the winning ticket. According to Bolduc, his business has never had this kind of attention before, though his shops have sold lucky lottery tickets before. He said among his 30 locations in western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut, he’s sold four $1 million-winning tickets and one $4 million-lucky ticket. “This location has had some big ones,” he said in front of the Montgomery Street station.While he doesn’t yet know who his lucky customer is, he said he was informed that the jackpot-winning ticket was sold Wednesday around 2:30 p.m. to a woman. When asked how the business would celebrate the occasion, Bolduc said the family business is already celebrating its 100-year anniversary. Michael Sweeney, executive director of the state lottery, said in a statement Thursday morning that the mix-up over where the ticket sold was due to information being “transcribed incorrectly” when the names of shops that sold all the winning tickets were being manually recorded. “We apologize for the confusion this created and remain thrilled that a jackpot winning ticket and two $1 million winning tickets were sold here in Massachusetts,” he said. The press had already descended onto Handy Variety in Watertown, the shop named in the original announcement. Handy Variety sold a $1 million winning ticket, as did Sandy’s Variety in Dorchester.

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People on Twitter were quick to reference Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe mix-up in 2015 and February’s Oscars gaffe.

https://twitter.com/PlunkettPrime/status/900694016437739522

And while the world waits for the jackpot winner to come forward at a 1 p.m. press conference, the Chicopee Police Department is having some fun. Officer Michael Wilk posted on the official department Facebook page, “Congrats to whomever won, and I am so glad to have finally found my long lost relative.”

https://www.facebook.com/ChicopeePoliceDepartment/posts/724680451051418