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Steven Hair of Troy received the gift of a lifetime when he won a Corvette Stingray and a $100,000 cash prize on his 66^th birthday.

“You can’t get a better birthday,” he said. “It will never be forgotten. I don’t think it can be topped!”

Troy’s partner at the Montgomery County Humane Society purchased a few tickets for him as a birthday gift from the Quik Chek on Zoo Parkway in Asheboro.

On Monday night, Hair celebrated his birthday with family and friends.

“We had dinner,” he recalled. “And then she presented me with my tickets and, as we scratched them off, one of the $5 tickets won me a Corvette and $100,000.”

This is the first time the lottery has offered a Corvette Stingray as a prize on a scratch-off ticket. Winners get to choose a 2021 model, or a current available model, and pick their favorite options, to bring home a sports car with a value of up to $109,600.

“I’m thinking red,” said Hair of his sportscar color of choice. “Amazing it was my birthday that it happened. This is the ultimate prize. It’s a birthday that you can’t replicate.

Hair claimed his prize Tuesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh and took home $70,751 after required federal and state tax withholdings.

“I’m thinking about buying a new house with part of that,” he said of the prize money. “Put a good down payment on a brand-new house.”

Corvette & Cash launched this month with four top prizes of a Corvette Stingray plus a $100,000 cash prize. Three top prizes remain to be won.

All Corvette & Cash tickets can be entered into a second-chance drawing to win the same prize package. The date of the drawing has not been set.

Ticket sales from scratch-offs like Corvette & Cash make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $725 million a year for education. For details on how $1.8 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Montgomery County in 2020, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.