DENVER -- It's probably not a tactic economic advisors advocate but one woman who lost her job as a truck operator gambled for four consecutive days, winning again and again until she won her biggest prize -- a Colorado Lottery jackpot worth $50,000.

Cathy Ortiz said it was one of the luckiest weeks of her life.

On Sunday, she won $1,260 playing slots in Black Hawk. A day later, she won $500 on the Colorado Lottery’s Free Ride Scratch game. The next day, while cashing in her winning ticket, she bought 10 more Free Ride tickets as well as a few Lotto and Powerball tickets.

On Thursday morning, Ortiz realized that one of those Powerball tickets was worth $50,000.

"I'm a gambler and my husband is probably thinking, 'Thank God, she finally got all her money back,'" Ortiz said.

She matched four of five numbers plus the Powerball number in Wednesday night's drawing. The standard prize is $10,000 but because she opted for the Power Play option, and the Power Play multiplier was 5, Ortiz turned the standard prize into $50,000.

The winning numbers were: 3, 7, 13, 34, 47 and the Powerball number was 30. The odds of matching four numbers plus the Powerball number is one in 723,145, according to Colorado Lottery Web site. The Power Play option costs an extra $1.

Ortiz lost her job as a small truck operator last fall. She and her husband own a home in Cheyenne, Wyo., but had been living with her son in Evans, Colo. Ortiz said the prize money will allow her to make a down payment on a home in the Fort Collins area, where she grew up.

She also plans to use the money to pay off her daughter's car and buy a used car for her daughter-in-law.