Delaware family claims $50,000 top prize
A lottery-loving Delaware couple – he likes jackpot games and she favors instant tickets – unwittingly acted as a team to produce a $50,000 Maryland Lottery win. The prize from The Price Is Right® scratch-off she purchased as a gift for her husband will help them cope with a financial challenge coming this year.
The Newark residents won a second-tier prize in the $10 game, which went on sale statewide last April. The game still has seven unclaimed $100,000 top prizes and eight $50,000 prizes to offer scratch-off players. The wife found the winning scratch-off at 7-Eleven #32341 located at 299 East Pulaski Highway in Elkton.
“I needed to run an errand down in Maryland and my husband asked me to get him a Powerball ticket there,” the lucky lady told Maryland Lottery officials. “I stopped in Elkton to get it and, while I was there, decided to get him a scratch-off as a little holiday present. The Price Is Right game caught my attention so that’s the one I picked.”
After scratching off his instant ticket that evening, her husband first thought that it was not a winner. “My daughter was watching over my shoulder and pointed out the match that I hadn’t seen.” The family’s noisy living room, he reported, turned suddenly silent. According to the Delaware dad, “It was an amazing moment. $50,000? We all sat there, unable to say anything.”
The family knew immediately that their Lottery prize would go toward college tuition for their daughter. “It was a wonderful relief knowing that the funds would be there to pay for school,” he said. “We were all so happy. Until, that is, we tried to get the ticket out of our safe the next day.”
Ready to make the trip to Baltimore to claim the prize, the family had a few anxious minutes when the safe refused to open. “I was about to look up what tools I’d need to break into it when I thought to change the batteries,” he said. “It opened right away.”