Jackpots come under strange circumstances on occasion, and recently an 80-year-old woman came into a $5,000 windfall, but couldn’t collect her prize immediately, having swallowed it. Tampa, Florida resident Miriam Tucker attended a charity event on Saturday that featured a $5,000 diamond giveaway.
The deal was a good one. For a mere $20 dollars, the women involved with the Tampa Women's Club could buy into the giveaway, earning a free glass of champagne. There were 400 glasses poured, and at the bottom of all but one glass, a small cubic zirconia stone was placed. At the bottom of one glass, however, was the coveted diamond, and it was Tucker who picked up the special glass.
What would have been an exuberant moment turned into an embarrassing one when Tucker took a sip of the champagne, accidentally sliding the diamond from the glass and down her throat. According to The AP, jewelers who had donated the product, Continental Wholesale Diamonds, began looking for the winner and Tucker had to eventually tell the company she swallowed it. There is a little light at the end of the tunnel: the woman actually had a colonoscopy scheduled on Monday and was able to capably recover the expensive jewel, with only a little bit of embarrassment attached.
While the situation was likely a little bit mortifying when it happened, swallowing a diamond is one of those things a person can look back on and laugh. It’s certainly less embarrassing than when a closed captioning group declared actress Zooey Deschanel to be the Boston bomber. It’s also less embarrassing than the man who accidentally shot a young girl, presuming she was a skunk.
