Husband’s selection of Neon x20 ticket pays off
An office assistant from Frederick has her husband to thank for punctuating Mother’s Day with a $10,000 Maryland Lottery scratch-off prize.
After a Mother’s Day dinner, the couple was on the way home and stopped at Ballenger Creek Pike Exxon in Frederick, located at 5870 Ballenger Creek Pike. She handed her husband $20 and asked him to get her a $10 scratch-off.
He picked a Neon X20 ticket, saying he was drawn to it by its bright colors. He also picked up a couple of instant tickets for himself. The ticket scratching began after they arrived home. He didn’t win anything, but the mother of two had great luck.
“I started hearing funny noises as she was scratching it,” her husband said. “And then she said, ‘You’d better come here.’ ”
As she scratched the instant ticket, she revealed a 20x symbol along with a $500 prize connected to it. The surprising sight made basic arithmetic impossible.
“I said, ‘20 times $500 … what does that calculate to?’ ” she said. “I was calm but nervous. And very happy.”
The couple was cautious about celebrating too quickly. They once thought they won $50,000 on a scratch-off, but they had read the ticket incorrectly and didn’t end up with the big prize.
“We wanted to slow down and confirm it before we went berserk,” the winner’s husband said with a smile.
Once they did that, the lucky winner made a late-night phone call to a friend, who accompanied the couple to Lottery headquarters to claim the prize.
“I told her I had wonderful news to share … and then she could go back to sleep,” she said with a laugh. The couple and their friend planned to spend the rest of the day at Maryland Live Casino after claiming the scratch-off prize at Lottery headquarters.
The lucky winner is a grandmother of three. She plans to use part of the prize to pay off a loan and put the rest into savings. She is also an avid Multi-Match player and is eager to one day win the top prize on Maryland’s in-state jackpot game.
The Neon x20 ticket went on sale in May 2015. Two of the game’s $100,000 top prizes are still awaiting discovery by lucky players, who can also try to win the one remaining $20,000 prize, four more $10,000 prizes and thousands of other prizes ranging from $10 to $1,000.