A Forestville woman needed to get home and put on her glasses to see that she was a $50,000 winner in the Powerball drawing on Aug. 30.
The transportation worker was scanning her ticket in a parking lot, and her Lottery app confirmed she was a winner, she said Sept. 4 when she claimed her prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore. When she looked at the message on her phone, she couldn’t tell if she had won $5,000 or a different amount.
“I couldn’t read it without my glasses,” she said. Her adult son had a look at the phone too, but he also had trouble reading the message. When she returned home to retrieve her glasses, she was all smiles.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was a $50,000 winner,” she added.
The loyal Lottery player said she always plays whether the jackpot is at $20 million or over $1 billion (as it is now). She matched four of the first five balls plus the Powerball for the third-tier $50,000 prize. The Prince George’s County resident is undecided on how she is going to spend the windfall, but said she is very blessed.
She bought the ticket at the Shell gas station at 3617 Forestville Road in Forestville. She said this is the first time she purchased tickets at that location.
“I will go there again!” she said with excitement, as she plans on buying more tickets for the next Powerball drawing, which is set for Saturday, Sept. 6, when the estimated annuity value is at $1.7 billion – the third-largest Powerball prize ever. The estimated one-time payment option is $770.3 million for the Saturday drawing.
