Clerk returns $1M ticket to great-grandma

A Rockaway Point great-grandmother described as a “regular” at Maeve’s Supermarket in Breezy Point knows that the store clerk, Chris Connelly, is one in a million.
That’s because the woman, Mary Alice Fallon, almost walked out of the store not long ago, leaving a winning million-dollar scratch-off lottery ticket on the counter - until Connelly called her back.
The avid church-goer said she stopped in the store on Monday, November 24, to buy one scratch-off ticket from each of the store’s three different Lottery vending machines.
It was part of a routine she has followed “religiously” for the past 10 years.
Apparently, Connelly had a routine of his own - he double-checked the ticket before throwing it away.
“I didn’t think about whether I should return (the ticket) to the customer or not; I just did,” said Connelly, whose mother, Deirdre Connelly, owns the store.
“I yelled, ‘wait, wait you need to come back. This is a big winner!’” the virtuous vendor recalled.
After he handed her back the winning “$1,000,000 Mania” ticket, Fallon, a great grandmother of two, immediately thanked Connelly for his honesty.
“I didn’t scratch the whole ticket. That was a mistake,” she said. “If it wasn’t for (Chris) and his honesty, I could have thrown away $1 million without knowing it - I guess someone was watching out for me,” she concluded.
Fallon and her seven children - Bernadette, David, Kevin, Mary, Paul, Peter and Susan - opted to claim the ticket as a group and will split the $1,000,000 annuity prize.
Each will receive an annual payment of $6,250 before taxes for a scheduled 20 years. The annual net check for each will come out to more than $4,000.
The former homemaker said she enjoys playing Lottery games as “one of life’s simple pleasures.”
“Sharing this with my family - being able to give each of them a little extra something - means everything to me,” Fallon said.