Will Gregorich realized he had a serious scratch-off lottery tickets addiction, an addiction that was only reinforced when he won $25,000 on a spur of the moment 2 a.m. trip to the gas station.

Gregorich, a sophomore kinesiology and sports studies major, has been playing lottery scratch cards since the summer he turned 18 years old, but on Jan. 4 he hit the jackpot.

The win, he said, was the result of a series of random events that made it possible for him and a friend to purchase the winning $30 ticket.

“I wouldn’t have been able to buy either of (the tickets) if I hadn’t won my fantasy football league that week I wouldn’t have had any money if I hadn’t been for that,” he said.

Gregorich’s friend Cole Blechle, a sophomore at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, would not have been able to buy the ticket if his father had not paid for the Denny’s dinner they had earlier that night, Gregorich said.

“I told him later that I would have bought the tickets regardless,” he said.

Gregorich said he and Blechle actually purchased another $30 card prior to buying the winning card at a U-Gas station in Waterloo.

“We just randomly decided ‘hey, lets go and buy a $30 scratcher’ and we didn’t win anything and we were like ‘the odds to break even are 2.57′ so we bought it and won $25,000,” he said. “We just bought the tickets to kill time.”

The state will take about $8,500 for taxes, he said.

Their card had several different games and provided four different numbers they needed to scratch-the pairs winning number was 17.

They were in shock, Gregorich said before realizing how lucky they were.

“After the initial shock, we started jumping around and screaming at the (cashier) that was working,” Gregorich said. “She didn’t seem that excited.”

Gregorich said he wanted to tell his mother, but decided against it because his mother had to work at 6 a.m. that morning.

When his mother found out-via Facebook photos- she told him to secure the house and put the card into the family’s safe, he said.

“She thought someone was going to break in and steal it,” Gregorich said.

Gregorich also said he faced skepticism from his friends.

“Nobody believed me. I had to show them several pictures just to get them to consider it was real,” he said.

Because Gregorich and Blechle are splitting the money, they will not receive the money for four to six more weeks, but they are already are planning a trip to England to potentially see the English Premier League soccer team.

“It’s something I always thought would be cool to do, but I never thought I would be able to do it,” he said.

He said they are hoping to budget well in order to keep the trip under $3,000, so they can save the rest.

Gregorich said he does think people can waste time and money on lottery tickets.

“The night it happened I said ‘I’m never buying another scratch off again’ and obviously that didn’t happen,” he said.

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].