The realization that he hadn’t bought a Lottery ticket in more than two weeks caused a Prince George’s County man to stop by the first Lottery retailer he saw on his way home from work last month. It wasn’t so much that he had a lucky feeling that prompted the stop as it was a feeling that an element of fun had been missing from his life for too long.
That fun multiplied when he scratched the $50,000 Cash ticket and won the game’s top $50,000 prize.
“I get a few tickets every week or so,” the Hyattsville man said May 4 when he claimed his prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore.
“Sometimes things get busy and it slips my mind, but when it eventually occurs to me, I get excited to try my luck again, to see what might happen,” he said.
What happened when he scratched his $50,000 Cash ticket at home that fateful night is something he still has trouble describing.
“I thought at first there was no way it could be real.” Even after studying the $20 scratch-off closely, there was still doubt in his mind, though, strangely, he chose not to immediately seek a definitive answer.
“Part of me wanted to go straight to a Lottery store to find out,” he said. “But more of me wanted to enjoy thinking about the win for a while before getting my heart broken with bad news.”
Curiosity finally drove him to get the official word the next day.
“I asked the clerk to check it for me and the biggest smile broke out on her face. I was ecstatic.”
$50,000 Cash debuted in December 2022 with 160 top prizes. This Hyattsville win leaves 54 still in circulation as well as 64 of the game’s $5,000 second tier prizes.
Food Stop Mini, the store that sold the $50,000 winner, receives a $500 bonus. The Montgomery County business is at 4820 Boiling Brook Parkway in Rockville.
