An avid Maryland Lottery player from Essex who was looking forward to retiring at the end of the summer is changing plans. She’ll be retiring a little sooner, courtesy of a $5 million Lottery scratch-off prize.
“The first thing I started doing was jumping up and down,” the winner said June 24 while claiming the windfall with her daughter at her side at Maryland Lottery headquarters.
Initially she was unsure about whether to play the $50 game $5,000,000 Fortune.
“I was thinking, ‘I want to play. I don’t want to play. I want to play. I don’t want to play,’” she said.
It was a bit of a departure for her because bingo-themed tickets are her favorites, but she made the fortunate decision to buy one of the $50 games. She carefully scratched to reveal the Winning Numbers and then exposed the numbers in the Your Numbers section — but not the prize amounts. The first thing she noticed was the image of a stack of cash in one square where there are usually numbers.
The ticket’s instructions say a stack of cash is an automatic winner for the amount shown, so her next move was to scratch the prize check QR code on the ticket and scan it on the ticket checker at the store where she bought the ticket. Initially, she thought it said $50,000.
“I was thinking, ‘That’s good. I can do $50,000!’” she said. But then she looked again and that’s when the jumping started.
She called her daughter to share the news, then she called a brother who also started jumping up and down at work, she said.
Overwhelmed, she said she found herself short of breath, so her brother calmed her by encouraging her to slow down and breathe.
The winner anticipates buying a house, and vehicles for herself and her daughter.
“She gets her Jeep. I get my Jeep,” she said. Some will also be put toward helping family members and a contribution to the winner’s faith community.
Most of the winnings, however, will go into an account. On advice of her longtime employer, she plans to invest and draw only on the income once her investments are set.
Sharing in the winner’s good fortune is the Back River Exxon gas station at 100 Back River Neck Road in Essex, which receives a bonus of $5,000 from the Lottery selling the lucky ticket.
The Essex player’s $5 million win on the $5,000,000 Fortune ticket is the first top-tier prize on the game to be claimed as of June 24, leaving two others. In addition, six of the original nine prizes at the $100,000 level, and eight of nine at the $50,000 level remain unclaimed, along with tens of thousands of others ranging from $50 to $10,000.
