Some people find a winning lottery ticket on the floor and immediately start negotiating with their conscience.

This guy did not.

A man from South Carolina found a lost Pick 3 lottery ticket worth $500 at a Murphy gas station in Myrtle Beach. He could have quietly pocketed it, convinced himself the universe had selected him, and walked away feeling very clever for about six minutes.

Instead, he did the decent thing.

He picked up the ticket, checked that it was a winner, and told the store manager to let him know if anyone came back looking for it. Eventually, someone did. The rightful owner returned to the store asking about the missing ticket, and the man handed it back.

The owner was grateful. Very grateful.

And according to the man, that was the moment he felt something good was coming his way.

“The owner was so grateful to get the ticket back that I knew I was going to hit the lottery after that,” he told the South Carolina Lottery. “I just knew it.”

Now, normally, this is the kind of thing people say before buying scratch cards for the next 40 years and winning nothing but mild disappointment.

But this time, somehow, the universe decided to commit to the bit.

Two months later, the same man bought a Palmetto Cash 5 ticket from the same store, the Walmart Fuel Kiosk on Dorsett Drive in Myrtle Beach. On April 25, his numbers came up:

6, 7, 12, 33, 35

That ticket won the $586,000 jackpot.

The odds of matching all five numbers in Palmetto Cash 5 are 1 in 850,668, which is lottery language for “do not expect this to happen just because you held a door open for someone.”

But it did happen.

The winner, who chose to remain anonymous, said he has been lucky in life and plans to use the prize money to help others.

“I’ve been lucky in life and can use this prize to help some people,” he said. “And maybe my story will encourage others to do the right thing.”

Which is probably the best possible ending to this story.

Not because returning a lost ticket guarantees a half-million-dollar jackpot. It absolutely does not. Most of the time, doing the right thing gets you nothing except a slightly cleaner conscience and maybe less evidence that you are a terrible person.

But that is still worth something.

In this case, it was apparently worth $586,000.

The store that sold the winning ticket also received a $5,860 commission, because even the petrol station got dragged into the good-karma storyline.

Palmetto Cash 5 is a daily South Carolina lottery game with a jackpot starting at $100,000. The jackpot increases by at least $10,000 each time there is no winner. Tickets cost $2, and drawings take place every day at 6:59 p.m. Eastern Time.

So yes, the lesson here is simple.

Return the lost ticket.

Do the decent thing.

And maybe, just maybe, when you choose to do the right thing, life finds a quiet way to return the favour.