By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A Princeton man earlier this year won $1 million playing a New Jersey Lottery scratch off game – now he needs to find a Realtor., Melvin Mejia, an employee of Lucy’s Kitchen and Market, took a break from work to walk to the nearby Krauszer’s on Route 206 to buy the “50X the Cash” game ticket, New Jersey Lottery said in a news release this week., He won, but he declined to take the annuity that would have paid him $40,000 a year for 25 years. Instead, he took the $728,000 cash value of the ticket, according to New Jersey Lottery. After federal and state taxes, he received about $487,760, the New Jersey Lottery said., Mejia, a married father of four, intends to use his earnings to buy a home and take his family on a Florida vacation, New Jersey Lottery said., Karlee, his manager at Lucy’s, said Friday that he is a “really, really hard worker.”, Murali Marru, the owner of the Krauszer’s, said Friday that this was the biggest lottery winning ticket he had sold in his four years of owning the convenience store. Thanks to Mejia’s win, Marru got a $18,500 commission that he said he used to buy out his business partner to take sole ownership of the store.
