A lottery team who work together whenever a climbing jackpot makes the news are well pleased having won more than $150,000, even though they – like millions of other Americans – were dreaming about a much larger prize.
It was Powerball’s near-historic jackpot roll, which topped out at $1.7 billion, that inspired their recent lottery purchases, they said Sept. 11 when they claimed their prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore.
“Neither of us buy tickets regularly,” one said. “But when the jackpot gets that big, how can you ignore it?”
The Charles County employees visited several lottery retailers in their community in the days before the Sept. 9 drawing and bought an assortment of Powerball tickets.
The co-workers got together the next morning to check their tickets over coffee.
“I counted the matches and they didn’t stop until we’d won $50,000. It was crazy,” Winner #1 said. They were a minute into a celebration when Winner #2 remembered they had spent an extra $2 per number combination for both of the game’s prize multiplier options.
“We quickly checked and the Power Play multiplier was 3X. Our $50,000 win suddenly became $150,000!”
Matches on other combinations on the $20 ticket boosted the total prize by another $10.
Both winners describe the Powerball win as “overwhelming.” Imagine how they’d have felt if they brought home that $1.7 billion!
Neither of the friends have any plans for their respective halves of the prize yet. They each expressed a feeling of relief, however, knowing that their whatever they decided, they now had some extra cushion in their savings.
Gray’s Market at 4000 Chicamuxen Road in Marbury sold the Powerball ticket that turned into the $150,010 winner.
