$52,000 winner, where are you?

So the Marrowbone Community Market at 109 Jefferson Street in Taylorsville — formerly known as Riverbend — sold a $52,000 winning ticket, according to the Kentucky Lottery Corporation.

That might be exciting news for the ticket holder, except that person has yet to be identified. Perhaps the more pressing news is that they only have until tomorrow to figure it out.

According to the KLC, the drawing for the Win for Life ticket was Aug. 28, 2010, and the winning numbers are 1-3-7-17-30-32 and the Free Ball number was 35. Win for Life has since been replaced with the Decades of Dollars game, but the winning ticket holder has 180 days from the draw date to claim the winnings.

Is the lucky ticket holder a Spencer Countian, or was he or she just passing through? Is the ticket long gone, in the trash, or washed up in the laundry? It’s hard to guess.  Whomever the winner is, the claimant has until Feb. 24 at 5 p.m. to report to the Kentucky Lottery’s corporate office in Louisville.

The way I see it, regardless of if the winning ticket holder is located, this story has a happy ending. According to the lottery corporation, if the ticket is not claimed, the $52,000 will go into a reserve fund to benefit the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship fund — a program set up to reward high school students who earn a 2.5 GPA or higher with money for college. I’m not saying the winner wouldn’t have exciting or even charitable plans for the money, but I don’t see how we can lose with $52,000 being committed to further the college education of Kentucky high school graduates.

I am sure it would be a really disappointing place to be if you figured out you held that winning ticket just one or two days after the deadline to claim the money.

So check your pockets, lent traps, trash cans and under those couch cushions, folks.

I feel sure that if the ticket is not identified, Kentucky’s high school students wishing to pursue higher education will thank that missing winner.