CLEVELAND – At just 25, Ryan Zack has already put himself on the Ohio Lottery’s winners list. Last week, he got the giant $100,000 check to prove it.

Zack, from Garfield Heights, was surprised at the Lottery’s Cleveland Regional Office when he thought he was coming in to sign some papers related to a Top Prize Drawing in which he was entered. Instead, he was informed that he was already the winner.

A note about how TPD works: Ohio Lottery instant tickets of $5 or more have the TPD feature. If the winning combination on an instant ticket lists “TPD” as the prize, the winner receives an instant cash prize and automatic entry into a drawing for the top prize offered in that game. The TPD drawing comes after the close of the game, which sometimes means that the ticket was purchased a year or so before the drawing actually occurs.

Zack purchased his $5 Emerald 7’s ticket in Sept. 2007 at a Cleveland-area Marc’s store. When he made his initial claim for the $1,000 that comes with a TPD entry, he was automatically entered into the Top Prize Drawing.

Since 1974, the Ohio Lottery had raised more than $16.1 billion to support K-12 education in Ohio’s schools. The Lottery’s fiscal year 2008 transfer to the Lottery Profits Education Fund was $672.2 million.