One waitress and bartender received the tip of her life in the form of a winning lottery ticket, ABC News reports, one of the many unplayed Keno tickets she's received from a regular customer at Conway's Restaurant and Lounge in Springfield, Ore.
Twenty-five-year-old Aurora Kephart has been working at Conway's for nearly four years, and is used to receiving the Keno tickets as part of her tip from a customer who wishes to remain anonymous.
"He lets me take whatever tickets I would want," she said to ABC News of her tipper. "That's a normal thing between us."
Last Thursday, the customer told Kephart to pick between two unplayed tickets he had purchased on Oct. 3. When she checked the numbers, Kephart was content to discover that she had won $5 on her first ticket, but when her big win on the second ticket flashed across the screen, the entire bar realized what had happened before she did.
Kephart told the Register-Guard that the "the reaction (in the bar) was crazy."
"Everyone was so amped up," she said. "I mean how often does that happen somewhere like Thurston? The bar is 80 percent regulars, so everyone knows everyone. People were so excited for me."
As for her initiatl reaction, Kephart told ABC News: "I turned around and I automatically handed it right back to [my regular customer]. He had me sign it so nobody could steal it. Then he said, 'Now that you've signed it, you're the only person who could cash it.'"
Feeling "scrambled" by the huge prize, Kephart drove to the Oregon Lottery office in Salem the next day to claim her winnings. Because she won a whopping $17,500, she urged her generous tipper to take a percentage of the money.
"I forced him to take it. I'm too humble for that," Kephart said. "I absolutely just want to pay it forward. I don't intend to keep all that money for myself."
As for what she plans on doing with her share of the winnings, Kephart told ABC News that so far, she hasn't spent a dime, and right now the only thing on her wishlist is a brand new couch.
"I have a couple of bills I'm going to pay off, but for the most part I'm just going to save it. I don't want to blow money just because I came into money," she said. Kephart plans to donate a portion of her prize money to local firefighters to benefit a muscular dystrophy charity.
Other than that, not much has changed so far in Kephart's life, though Conway's has become a hot spot now as everyone wants to come and see the bar that produced the winning Keno ticket.
"Everyone is so excited," Kephart said. "Everybody keeps saying good things happen to good people. I'm so glad so many people think that I'm deserving of that."
Click here to see a photo of Aurora Kephart being congratulated on her win by a regular customer at Conway's.
