Emailing her tax preparer in the middle of the night with financial questions isn’t something a Pikesville woman does very often — if ever! She turned to him for advice in the wee hours of the night this week, however, after scratching off a $77,777 top-prize win on the Maryland 7s game.
The startled and shaken woman, who works the night shift in Baltimore in the medical field, didn’t discover her good fortune until she was on a work break.
“I buy scratch-offs occasionally to kill time during my break,” said the 42-year-old. She picked up two games at 7-Eleven #11637 in Pikesville before going into work that night. She initially planned to buy a $5 Ravens X10 game, but she changed her mind when she spotted the $5 Maryland 7s ticket.
“I bought the $2 Ravens game and I bought this one because it was new,” she said of the Maryland 7s scratch-off. Alone on her break, she scratched off her tickets. She had no luck with the Ravens X5 game, but the Maryland 7s game, which featured a crab-claw design, carried the big prize.
“I was shocked,” she said. A co-worker spotted the Ravens X5 game and asked if she had won anything. The lucky woman replied, “Not on that one but I did on this one!” The rest of the night, as word of her win spread, her co-workers came to see the lucky instant ticket and offer congratulations.
“Nobody could believe it,” she said. “One lady took her glasses off to look at it. I didn’t know what to do next. We even went online to figure out how to cash it.”
Remember that email to her tax preparer where she revealed her $77,777 win and asked what to do? “He did answer me,” she said. “He said, ‘Call me as soon as you can’ and I did!”
Her good news spread like a virus. “My co-workers all said, ‘Don’t tell anybody!’” and yet, as morning came and the day shift arrived, word of her win continued to spread. She is still trying to keep her big win a secret — with little success! “Everybody at work was like, ‘You’re always doing things for other people and you deserve this!’”
The happy winner arrived at Lottery headquarters after ending her shift, feeling exhausted and excited. She plans to put her prize toward the cost of buying her first new home.
The Maryland 7s game still has six unclaimed top prizes of $77,777. Her retailer also benefits from her win. The 7-Eleven #11637 located at 1 Greenwood Place in Pikesville earns a $777 bonus from the Lottery for selling the top-prize scratch-off in the game.