Powerball’s 5x Power Play multiplier boosts win
While Monday’s freezing rain was a hassle for most of central Maryland, the school delays it caused was a blessing for a Bowie man. That extra time allowed the bus driver to make a quick trip to Lottery headquarters in Baltimore to claim a $50,000 prize he won over the weekend.
The Prince George’s County school bus driver is a frequent Lottery player, always making sure to get tickets for Powerball and Mega Millions, when their jackpots get big – which they are now. He bought his tickets last week from the Wawa store at 163 South Crain Highway in Upper Marlboro and thought no more about them until Sunday morning.
“I checked the winning Powerball numbers on my phone and noticed a match, then another, and then another. They kept adding up,” he said. Never having matched so many numbers, the 61-year-old father of five and grandfather of two checked the payoff chart to see what he’d won.
“I saw the $10,000 and yelled for my wife,” he said. “She was sure I had it wrong.” The couple celebrated for a few minutes when it occurred to him that he’d selected the Power Play option on his ticket and the multiplier was 5 for the Jan. 10 drawing. “All of a sudden the $10,000 became $50,000. You should have seen my wife then.”
The couple’s immediate plans for the prize are paying bills and traveling to visit family. “We cannot believe this happened to us,” the winner said. “We will always be very grateful that this good luck found us.”
The Powerball jackpot that caught the attention of our Bowie winner is still climbing. The Jan. 14 drawing offers a top prize of $176 million and a cash option of $117.3 million.