For three days, Napolean Elvord had no idea he had won a fortune. Elvord, a military veteran, in his late 50s who needs of a kidney transplant, had $14.3 million waiting on a table in his house and didn’t know it. Mega lottery

Three days after it was announced that the winning Megabucks ticket from the Jan. 14 drawing had been sold at a Wisconsin Mobil station, Elvord still had no idea the life-changing sum of money that he had. The clerks at the Madison store that Elvord visits daily asked him if he had the winning ticket. But he said it wasn’t him, and as the days passed, no one came forward to claim the prize.

Then Corky Wunderlin, the store manager, asked him again, and it dawned on Elvord: he had mixed up the drawing days that produced the Megabucks winner. Still not believing it when he found the winning $1 ticket sitting on a table at home, Elvord took it to the Wisconsin Lottery office, which validated that he was, actually, the owner of the winning ticket and about to become a multi-millionaire. He got a lump-sum payment of $10.2 million, $6.87 million in total, after taxes, and overcoming one in seven million odds. Powerball lottery

“It’s still going through my head,’’ Elvord told the Wisconsin State Journal.

As Lottery director Michael Edmonds said, “Elvord had the state lottery officials scratching their heads when he came forward with his ticket. Most people who come to redeem their prize already know they have the winning ticket, whereas Elvord still wasn’t sure.”

“The first thing they asked me was, ‘Did you make up the ticket?’’’ Elvord said.

As a daily routine, Elvord comes to the Mobil station multiple times per day to buy coffee and lottery tickets, and on the day he won, he actually let another customer go ahead of him before playing the winning numbers. His picks — 17, 26, 27, 28, 37 and 42 — were computer-generated, and the fact that he bought the ticket at all may have been an accident.

“I think it was a mistake because I was trying to play the Powerball,’’ he told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Elvord’s windfall was also a jackpot for the Mobil station, the store where he bought the ticket, as the owners earned a $100,000 commission from the lottery for selling the winning ticket.

Elvord, a semi-retired construction worker, plans on returning to his native Texas as soon as possible and putting the money toward health insurance, up to now he has received regular kidney dialysis for the last five years.

“I hadn’t really made any plans yet, but I do look at the economy and think about the people that have lost homes that had homes and had jobs, and I’m into construction. I like remodeling, fixing up things, and I’m looking at possibly doing something in that area to re-sell homes and bring people back into their housing area.”

Congrats to Mr. Elvord!