We know how it gets — the mail piles up, it’s filled with credit card offers, promotional post cards and other junk you’d rather avoid. But it’s worth taking a look through that stack of unwanted flotsam and jetsam once in awhile, as one Michigan woman who is now $1 million richer found out recently, after spotting a winning lottery ticket in her mail pile.

The woman told Michigan Lottery officials that she’d bought a ticket for the May 26 Mega Millions drawing at a local party store, and then immediately forgot about it.

It wasn’t until she went back to the store and started chatting with a clerk who told her that a $1 million winning ticket had been bought there but no one had claimed the reward that she remembered her purchase.

She searched through a pile of mail and found the ticket nearly four months after she bought it. The five winning numbers from the drawing matcher her ticket, which she hid in a chocolate candy tin until she traveled to Lansing to claim her prize Tuesday.

Remember: You have to play to win — and then you have to actually check your ticket to get your money.

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