$1 Million Lottery Ticket Sold in St. Augustine

ST. AUGUSTINE, FL -- 2009 is turning out to be a good year already at Carmelo's Shell Station on King Street in downtown St. Augustine.

"Florida Lottery called me yesterday about 2 p.m. and said we got great news for you," Joe Tringali said. He owns Carmelo's.

One of the nine $1 million Holiday Millionaire Raffle tickets was sold at Tringali's store, formerly known as Conners Shell Station.

There's no word on the winner yet. When inside the store Thursday morning, you wonder if it'll be the next person who walks in the door.

Regular customer Bonnie Hayflick did walk in -- with ticket in hand moments after First Coast News arrived to interview Tringali.

"Oh this will be great if it's yours," Tringali told Hayflick.

He scanned the ticket through the lottery machine... and no luck.

Tringali shook his head. "No, I'm sorry."

Hayflick asked, "Nothing? Nada?"

Tringali shook his head, "Nothing."

Each Holiday Millionaire Raffle ticket costs $20 bucks. There was a limited amount sold, so the chances of winning were better than usual.

The winning ticket sold from the store had the number 0144306 on it.

The store gets $5,000 for selling the winning ticket. The publicity and the money come at a really good time too.

Tringali shut down the store for four months this year to renovate it and turn it into Carmelo's.

"It hurt quite a bit," Tringali explained. "We lost a lot of our regular customers for a while and it takes time for people to get used to coming in on a regular basis again."

However, odds are... those customers will be back, especially if Carmelo's is known as a lucky spot.

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