Senior citizen claims $50,002 for Bonus Match 5
Sand, surf and sun are on the agenda next week for a Baltimore woman who won $50,002 Tuesday night in the Maryland Lottery’s Bonus Match 5 drawing. The senior citizen is grinning ear to ear and happily planning to take a long-awaited trip to the Bahamas in style.
“I’m just thrilled,” she told officials Wednesday at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore. “I can pay my bills, pay my property taxes and finally have some breathing room. I can relax.”
The mother-of-five loves playing Bonus Match 5 and always lets the machine pick her numbers. A loyal Bonus Match 5 player for more than a decade, she buys a $6 ticket each day. Her top win to date totaled a little more than $1,000. “I’ve hit $400 every so often,” she said.
That amount, in fact, is exactly what this grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of seven originally thought she had won. She made a one-digit error when she wrote down the Bonus Match 5 winning numbers Tuesday night. When they appeared on TV, she squinted at them and failed to don her reading glasses. “I wrote down the number 38 instead of 39,” she confessed. She told her son she won $400 and $2 on her ticket and went off to bed.
However, her son rechecked the numbers. He excitedly delivered the great news to the initially unconvinced, sleepy woman. When she realized she had actually won $50,002, the woman immediately thanked the heavens above. “I got the help I needed,” she said. Other than telling her son and her sister of her good fortune, the widow told only her best friend of more than four decades about the win. She plans to keep it that way, too!
Want to tap into her luck? The woman bought her ticket at Locust Point Liquors at 1515 E. Clement St. in Baltimore.