Anne Arundel County resident bought winning ticket while running errands
A Royal Farms manager who took her son with her to drop off paperwork at another manager’s store in Baltimore spotted a Maryland Lottery vending machine filled with her favorite scratch-off games. The diehard Ravens fan simply loves the $5 Ravens instant ticket.
“My son just looked at me,” said the Severn mom, and they headed toward the machine to try her luck. The married mother of three adult children and one teenager bought a $5 Ravens scratch-off and two other instant tickets and took them home to play.
The Anne Arundel County resident has won $50 and $100 in the past on scratch-offs and last year collected $1,500 as a Contestant of the Game in a Lottery second-chance contest. Never in her wildest dreams did the 56-year-old imagine that Sept. 12 would be her lucky $10,000 day!
At first, nothing happened out of the ordinary as she followed her scratch-off routine. She always reveals the winning numbers and then scratches the ticket row by row to check for matches. The first row on her winning ticket had three “Win” symbols and two matching numbers.
“I saw the first “Win” symbol for $1,000 and said, ‘Oh my God.’ I saw the second “Win” for $500 and said ‘Oh my God!’ again,” she said. Her son and one of her daughters were watching by this time. “I started hugging them,” the lucky player said.
“She was freaking out before she was even done,” the daughter said with a laugh.
A sister who accompanied the mom and daughter to Lottery headquarters to claim the prize said she received a confusing phone call from the lucky winner shortly after the win took place. “She called me and I thought she’d been in a car wreck,” the winner’s sister said. “I couldn’t understand what she was saying.”
The three women came together to claim the prize while the other members of their family were attending work and school. The loyal player plans to spend her prize on bills, car payments and on her future grandchild whose arrival in November will make her the grandmother of two. She hasn’t attended a Ravens game in person yet, but noted that the win will certainly make that possible this season, too!
The happy winner found her lucky ticket at the Royal Farms store located at 3360 Annapolis Road in Baltimore. The $5 Ravens scratch-off has plenty of top prizes remaining and a second-chance contest that offers prizes of cash, season tickets and more. Visit ravens.mdlottery.com for details. Unclaimed prizes on the $5 game include four top prizes of $100,000, six $50,000 prizes and 10 more $10,000 prizes. The Lottery is also selling a $2 Ravens scratch-off this year.