Saukville Couple Takes $172K Lottery Win

As regular players of the Badger 5 Wisconsin Lottery, Katie Emory said it took her and her husband nearly 24 hours after the drawing to realize they had won $172,000.

Emory said her husband, Howard — who goes by the name Skip — works third shift. After he had left for work, Emory went to the gas station and turned in her ticket.

Workers at the local Tri-Par station, 305 W. Dekora St., put the lottery ticket into the machine, only for it to be "spit" back out, Emory said, telling her it had to be redeemed at a local lottery office.

That's when the big win hit her.

"All the way (home) I'm in tears saying, '(God), thank you ... thank you ... thank you," she said.  "I have been thanking God for the last week and a half, still pinching ourselves — can't believe it."

Emory has lived in Saukville for 24 years with her husband. She spent part of her childhood in Oshkosh before moving to Grafton and then Port and Saukville, graduating from Port Washington High School. She said the win comes at a good time, as her car had broken down and her husband's vehicle was in such a state that it should have been in the junk yard years ago, she said — detailing its Flinstone-like characteristics.

But Emory said the money is not just going to fix her and her husband's own woes.

"I believe in pay it forward, God helped us so I'm helping others," she said. Emory stopped by a local church offering $500 each to two single mothers in need.

They have also purchased a surprise for some good friends who now live in West Virginia: a new TV and surround system will arrive at their doorstop to replace the "big, old" TV the couple currently has.

That idea came about because the friends had often made a promise to pay off each others' homes if they won the lottery; because this pot wasn't quite large enough to do that, the Emory's decided on the TV.

Emory said she buys Badger 5 lottery tickets regularly because she likes that it is a Wisconsin-based program that gives money back to the state.

A portion of the $172,000 winnings will also go to the Tri-Par station, according to Wisconsin Lottery spokesperson Andrew Bouage; lottery ticket retailers earn 2 percent of any winnings over $600, he said. The Saukville Tri-Par also sold a .

Badger 5 Lottery tickets are only sold in Wisconsin. "It's our game that we developed," Bouge said. Learn how to play Badger 5 on the Wisconsin Lottery website.