Spokane retiree wins lottery for second time with tickets from the same Spokane Safeway

After winning $100,000 in the lottery last week, Henry Dohler has now won with tickets from the Shadle Park Safeway twice, according to a news release from Washington’s lottery.

Every day Dohler wakes up, pours a cup of coffee, buys a few lottery tickets and reads the newspaper, checking for tickets from the day before.

Last Tuesday, he learned the tickets he bought that Monday won him a free ticket. On Wednesday, he bought regular tickets and picked up the freebie. On Thursday, that free Hit 5 ticket won him and his wife Gloria Dohler $100,000.

“It’s like the saying goes, sometimes the best things in life are free,” Dohler said in the release. “I had to check the ticket three times to make sure that I won. I just couldn’t believe it. I actually felt myself getting flushed like my temperature was rising.”

Dohler, a retiree who sold Caterpillar equipment parts for almost 50 years, also won $20,000 in 2010 with a Scratch ticket from the same Safeway at 2507 W. Wellesley Ave.

Dohler is one of 342 Washington lottery winners who has won $10,000 or more on multiple occasions since 1982, when Washington’s Lottery began, said Dan Miller, spokesman for Washington’s Lottery. Most of those wins were years apart, like in Dohler’s case, Miller said. The most wins by a single person is 16, all from playing the state’s Match 4 game, Miller said.

If he were younger, Dohler said, he might buy a 1963 Corvette Split-Window, his dream car. Instead, the couple will likely spend some of their winnings to plan a several-week trip to the East Coast.

Since its inception, Washington’s Lottery has generated more than $4.5 billion to fund state programs, including the Washington Opportunity Pathways Account, which provides grants to help college students statewide receive higher education, according to the release.