Brooklyn Park Man Has Less Hair, More Cash

Anne Arundel County resident claims first $30,000 top prize on Tic Tac Dough scratch-off

236-Tic-Tac-Dough-ITVMAs he wandered around Marley Station Mall while waiting for a chair to open in a nearby barber shop, a Brooklyn Park man stopped at a Lottery retailer and picked out a $3 Tic Tac Dough scratch-off ticket to occupy the time. He soon found himself holding a $30,000 winner.

“I was shocked,” the 47-year-old husband and father told Lottery officials. “I was positive that it couldn’t be correct, that it wasn’t real.”

The nerves he experienced didn’t endear him to his barber a few minutes later.

“I put the ticket in my pocket and kept checking to make sure it was there,” he said. “The guy had to keep telling me to sit still.”

The bank employee was so convinced that he’d read the ticket incorrectly that he didn’t tell his wife about the win. Until, that is, she noticed his odd behavior the next morning.

“He woke up before me, which he never does, and he seemed to be stressed about something,” his wife said. “We’ve been worried about bills recently, so I assumed that was it. I told him we’d figure it all out.”

It was then that he broke the news.

“I told her that maybe we had the answer,” the lucky winner said.

The Brooklyn Park couple plan to use the prize money to pay their bills and make this Christmas extra special for their daughter. The winner purchased the lucky Tic Tac Dough ticket at the Marley Convenience store in the mall at 7900 Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie. The retailer will receive a $300 bonus from the Maryland Lottery for selling the winning ticket. Tic Tac Dough was just launched last month, and this is the first of its four $30,000 prizes to be claimed.