Tom's Life Bits

Kokeela Thapa, whose husband Kamal Thapa owns
Center Street Grocery in Apex, won $500,000 on a
scratch-off card in the North Carolina Education Lottery.

APEX - It was almost quitting time on a recent Friday when a few haggard workers spilled into Center Street Grocery. They were there for beer and cigarettes.

And lottery tickets.

As Kokeela Thapa ripped scratch-off tickets from a spool and slid the low-probability life changers across the counter, she wished her customers luck.

Early this month, it looked like quitting time as well for Kokeela and her husband Kamal Thapa.

The store's owners, who moved to the United States from Katmandu in 2000, were $100,000 in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy.

They had owned part of an unsuccessful gas station and convenience store across the street before moving in December to the much smaller Center Street Grocery, a tiny, white building only half stocked with snacks, drinks and U-Haul rental accessories.

The family had to draw on Kokeela's 401K to pay their mortgage and car payment.

They had to ask family for money. But that became a tired routine.

“There was no more family to ask,” Kamal Thapa said.

So he contacted a lawyer to begin filing for bankruptcy. “We were about to lose everything,” he said.

On the morning of March 8, Kokeela Thapa finished her morning Hindu prayers and fixed breakfast for her 5-year-old daughter Kanousa.

With a free moment, she turned her attention to the green and red lottery ticket her husband bought for her a few days earlier.

Kamal Thapa has spent thousands of dollars on his own lottery tickets over the past years; in Florida, Virginia and now North Carolina.

But his wife almost never played. She didn't put much hope in lottery tickets, at best seeing them as entertainment for her daughter. “She loves to scratch them off, and I usually just let her do it,” Kokeela Thapa said.

But on that day, she grabbed the penny herself.

With the grid of small black numbers exposed, she scanned down the left column, then peeked down five rows to find a match.

Her lucky number: 28. Its match sat squarely above another number: $500,000.

“I didn't believe it,” she said. She immediately called her husband, who told her to drive to the store right away.

Kamal Thapa beamed, but never bragged, that same week as he shared a Xerox copy of the $10 ticket.

The prize, even after taxes, is enough to salvage the family's modest dream.

“We're going to settle our debt, make a down payment on this property, save for our daughter's education, and, God willing, have another child,” Kamal Thapa said.

The couple is now more committed than ever to this small corner lot and to this store.

“This is our temple now,” he said. “It's where our life got better.” ted.richardson@nando.com or 919-460-2608