He went to buy chicken. He came home a millionaire.

Patrick Emmerich knew one day he would win big in the lottery, and he did — $2 million.

He was at Dierbergs in Shiloh and had a feeling he should buy a lottery ticket.

“I was at the store picking up chicken for dinner when something told me to get a lottery ticket, so I did, and I won,” the Shiloh resident said.

He scratched off an Illinois Lottery $2 million Extravaganza ticket and instantly won $2 million.

“I always said that one of these days I was going to win a big lottery prize and now I can’t believe I really did,” Emmerich said.

When he saw the $2 million prize amount, he thought he must have made a mistake, so he asked the clerk to double-check it. The clerk confirmed the win and Emmerich immediately signed the back of his ticket.

“And then I stuffed the ticket down my shirt and went straight home,” Emmerich said. “When I told my family that I won, they didn’t believe me.”

Emmerich is married with four children and one grandchild.

He says he won’t quit his job at a Belleville factory.

Instead, he plans to donate some of the money to his church, buy a car and trailer and invest the rest.

Dierbergs received a $20,000 bonus, 1 percent of the prize amount, for selling the winning ticket.

The $2,000,000 Extravaganza game is a $20 instant ticket offering three top prizes of $2 million, two of which have not yet been claimed.

This story was originally published September 14, 2016 at 12:50 PM with the headline "He went to buy chicken. He came home a millionaire.."