Woman Who Won $150,000 in Lottery to Donate It All to Charity

A Virginia woman just won $150,000 in the lottery — and plans to donate every penny to charity.

Carrie Edwards of Midlothian selected her numbers online and matched four of the first five of them— plus the Powerball number — on the Sept. 8 Virginia Lottery drawing, according to local news outlet WWBT. While this usually would have resulted in $50,000, Edwards had paid an extra dollar for Power Play, which tripled her winnings. 

Edwards said that she wasn’t accustomed to playing the lotto online — and she ended up asking her phone’s talking ChatGPT app to help her pick her numbers.

“I’m like, ChatGPT, talk to me […] Do you have numbers for me?” she recalled while speaking at a filmed press conference shared by the Virginia Lottery. 

She went on to say that she discovered she had won the sum two days later.

“I’m sitting in a meeting, and I look at my phone and it says, ‘Please collect your lottery winnings.’ And I thought, ‘I think it’s a scam. I know I didn’t win,’ “ she said.

However, Edwards said that once she verified she had, in fact, won the money, she knew what she had to do.

“As soon as that divine windfall happened and came down upon my shoulders, I knew exactly what I needed to do with it. And I knew I needed to give it all away, because I’ve been so blessed, and I want this to be an example of how other people, when they’re blessed, can bless other people,” she said during the press conference.

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Edwards went on to say that she will be dividing the winnings equally among her three favorite charities. 

“The first [charity] is the AFTD (The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration),” she explained at the press conference, before adding that her late husband died of the disease, which causes early-onset dementia, in 2024.

She said that the next charity is Shalom Farms, a regenerative farm in Richmond.

“It’s the greatest organization, because they understand that — when it comes down to it — we all are responsible for helping each other in this life and helping community, and helping those who don’t have what we have. [It’s] something that they are focused on through their food justice and food equity program.”

Edwards’ final charity of choice is the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, which she said was “very near and dear to her heart” because her father was a fighter pilot, and it was his favorite charity.

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Edwards said that she felt “so blessed” that she knew “exactly” what she wanted to do with the money as soon as she won it. 

“Because it’s a windfall I didn’t expect, and it’s certainly going to help those in need,” she concluded at the end of the press conference.

PEOPLE reached out to the Virginia Lottery for comment on Thursday, Sept. 18, but did not receive an immediate response.