Bartender Earns Big Tip In The Form Of Winning Lottery Ticket

A Springfield, Oregon bartender recently won $17,500 via a Keno ticket. While this is a nice amount of money to win, that’s not the sort of news that typically is nationally broadcast. However, the story behind 25-year-old Aurora Kephart’s win is a truly touching one.

Kephart has been bartending at Conway’s Restaurant and Lounge in the Oregon town for the last four years. When a person works at a restaurant or bar for a while, he or she typically develops interesting relationships with some of the regular customers. Kephart had a tradition with a regular customer involving Keno tickets. The anonymous regular would give the young woman unplayed Keno tickets as tips. Last Tuesday, the patron asked Kephart to pick any two of a handful of tickets that she wanted as her tip. According to The Register-Guard, the first card she played yielded her five dollars. Then, the magic happened.

After playing the second ticket, Kephart realized she had just won $17,500. She immediately tried to give the ticket back to the bar patron, feeling like it was rightfully his ticket.

But the man told her to keep it, forcing her to sign her name so that she became the only person who could pick up the prize money. The next day, that’s just what the young woman did.

Now, that’s she’s nabbed the prize money, Kephart says she’s buying a brand new couch. Oh, and giving some of the prize money to the dude who brought in the Keno ticket.

Once upon a time, I worked in a little diner similar to the Oregon establishment in that we had plenty of regular patrons. Each week, one of our regulars would bring a lottery ticket alongside his tip, hoping for a win. The other waitresses and I never saw a monetary gain as big as Kephart’s, but we did develop a great relationship and rapport with our regular customers due to rituals like these. That sense of community is key to a small business, and it’s really great to see one of those rituals pay off in a really big way.