Jack Haugse knew something was different when he wasn’t a loser.

The Rapid City man, who buys his tickets from Boyd’s Drug Mart each week, usually scans his lottery ticket after a drawing and sees he didn’t win.

Not this time.

“When he scanned the ticket, it didn’t come up with his normal ‘not a winner’ message, so he took it up to the (Boyd’s) clerk and had her check it,” his wife, Cheryl, said. The clerk “got the same message he did, so that’s when they printed out the winning numbers and checked them against the ticket.”

On her husband’s behalf, Cheryl stopped in at the Rapid City Lottery office Friday and claimed the $110,745 Dakota Cash jackpot for the Nov. 18 drawing. Boyd’s will receive a bonus of about $5,500 for selling the winning ticket.

The clerk’s excitement was already alerting other customers in the store to the win, but the first person Jack called was his wife. And knowing what a prankster her husband can be, at first she didn’t believe they had won.

“When he called, he asked if I was working hard, and I said yes. Then he said, ‘I won Dakota Cash,’ and my first response was: ‘For real? Are you serious?’ I didn’t know whether to believe him or not,” she said.

The couple, who have three adult children and three grandchildren, plan to use part of the money to pay some bills and might take a trip.

Until Wednesday night’s drawing, the couple’s biggest lottery win had been $100. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1:324,632.

Cheryl said, although their biggest win is now a jackpot worth many times that amount, they’ll continue to try their luck.

“Winning the Dakota Cash jackpot is just proof that it really can happen to you,” Cheryl said.