Michigan Man’s Call Terrifies Wife—Then Comes the $500K Surprise

"I can’t breathe!”

Imagine getting that call from your spouse. That’s exactly what happened to a Michigan woman when her husband phoned from his car. What sounded like a medical emergency quickly turned into something else entirely—he’d just won $500,000.

Patrick Jedrzejczyk says he and his wife didn’t sleep for days after learning they’d won $500,000 playing the Michigan Lottery’s Electric 50s instant game.

How the $500K Winning Ticket Happened

“I was on my way home from work and stopped to buy a lottery ticket,” Jedrzejczyk told the Michigan Lottery. “There are a few scratch-off games I usually play, Electric 50s being one of them, and that’s the game I happened to pick that day.”

He said he went numb after scratching the ticket in his car and realizing he’d just hit a massive prize. The first call he made was to his wife (good thinking, sir).

“When I saw I won $500,000, I called my wife and said, ‘I can’t breathe!’ She thought I was having a medical emergency until I told her, ‘I just won half a million dollars!’ After I hung up, I scanned the ticket on the Michigan Lottery app to make sure it was real.”

Kids Thought It Was a Joke

The Alger resident said even his kids didn’t believe the news at first.

“We called our kids to tell them, and they thought we were pulling an early April Fools’ Day prank,” he said. “This has been an unbelievable experience.”

The 61-year-old plans to pay off bills and save the rest.