Holiday parties are a time-honored tradition and usually the one thing that stands between employees and time off work. 

They aren’t always fun, but the free food and holiday spirit can help time go by quicker. And in the case of one recent Christmas party, a stolen gift led to one employee getting the shock of a lifetime.

Harmon Dental Center typically celebrated Christmas with dinner at a local restaurant. But this year, the owner decided to have an office party. The office’s manager at the Kentucky dentist office, Lori Janes, said the idea of a party was new. “This was the first year we decided to do this,” she told the Today Show.

But she said Harmon wanted to allow people more time outside of work with their families. “I’m like, ‘OK, that’s great,” Janes recalls. “I was kind of the last one to go in there. And they’re like, ‘Pick your number and then we’re going to eat and then we’re going to start having our little Santa exchange.”

Janes says the only rule was that each gift could only be “stolen” twice. After that, whoever is holding the gift could open it. She and 12 other employees picked numbers to see who went first. Janes drew No. 4, and initially received a $50 gift card to TJ Maxx. She said she was a bit bummed when it was stolen, so she in turn took five scratch-off tickets from another co-worker. 

“Dr. Harmon’s wife was like, ‘Lori, that’s dead now because no one else gets to take (the lottery tickets) from you,’” Janes told The Today Show. 

Lori Janes/Today Show

She won on the first 4 tickets for a total of $50. But then Janes scratched the final one, called ‘Hit the Jackpot.” She said she felt it would be different because that ticket had the numbers. 2 and 14, the birth days of her husband and daughter, respectively.

“I was so happy with my $50, like I never win on scratch (off tickets),” Janes said. “I was like, ‘Well now I get to spend $50 at TJ Maxx,’ right, because I’m thinking in my head, ‘you stole my gift card.’”

But that final ticket had her shocked ‒ it was worth $175,000!

It’s been a whirlwind,” she said. “I swear for that whole week, every time I talked about it, I was crying. It still didn’t seem real.”

The stunned Janes says she FaceTimed her husband as soon as she learned she had won. “He was like, ‘Are you all right, do you not feel good?’ I’m like, ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m so red because I’m freaking out. ‘Babe, I just hit the lottery.’ He’s like, ‘You did not.”

Photo of the Janes’ family with their winning lottery check.
Photo from the Today Show

Her coworkers told her husband that she was telling the truth. They asked him to pick Janes up from work because she ‘can’t drive, she’s shaken,” Janes said. Her husband loaded their two kids and the family dog into the car and picked her up from work. They immediately drove to the state’s lottery office to turn in the winning ticket.

“A big chunk of it will just be really for school for my kids, which will be amazing,” she said. “They were already crying and this year I got to give them some cash at Christmas and you should see the looks on their faces. It was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ super cool moment. It’s big.”

For Janes, though, she said this Christmas was one for the history books. “Just to be able to do that extra was really cool,” she said. “So it’s like a Christmas that we’re definitely never going to forget.”

Watch the newest lottery winner celebrate her Christmas win, below.

Sources: Today Show | ABC7