Waitress wins $17,500 on lottery ticket tip

A bartender in Oregon says she still hasn't spent a penny on herself after winning $17,500 when a regular gave her a lottery ticket as a tip.

Aurora Kephart, a bartender at Conway's Restaurant and Lounge in Springfield, Ore., told ABC News she often receives Keno tickets from one of her regular customers, but she was dumbstruck last week when one of the unusual tips paid her $17,500 in winnings.

The customer told her to choose two of his lottery tickets when he paid his bill, according to ABC. When she checked the first, she found she had won $5, but the second ticket made the jaws of everyone in the bar drop.

Kephart told the Associated Press she tried to give the man his winning ticket back but he refused to take it. She shared some of the money with him anyway.

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Kephart told ABC she also paid some bills, donated money to a muscular dystrophy fundraiser and she's planning to buy a new couch. But otherwise, she hasn't spent anything.

"I have not bought anything, not shoes, not a T-shirt," she told the broadcaster, adding she didn't want to "blow money."

A similar case of lucky tipping took place in Scarborough, ON, in 1995 when a customer left his lottery ticket and a promise to share any winnings with a waitress at Al Mac's Bar, according to the Associated Press. The ticket did win, and the pair split $250,000.

When a police officer in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. made the same promise to another waitress and won $6 million in 1984, the story became a feature film entitled It Could Happen to You, starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda.

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