Prince George’s County couple share scratch-off’s top prize

A Landover man who stopped at his local Exxon recalls knowing he wanted to grab a couple of scratch-offs. What he didn’t know was that he would leave the Prince George’s County Lottery retailer $50,000 richer.

“I looked over all the scratch-offs and saw that the $5 Super Bonus Bucks only had five tickets left,” he said days later, while sitting in the Maryland Lottery Winner’s Circle with his wife. “I knew I had to buy the last few.”

The Prince George’s County resident scratched the first three games and did not get a win. The father of two then got a call from his wife, who told him she didn’t have a great day. The construction worker decided to dedicate the last two scratch-offs to her. After scratching the price check code on the very last of his five instant tickets, his eyes opened wide.

“He calmly said on the phone, ‘I think I just won $50,000,’ ” said his wife. “I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just trying to make me feel better because of the issues I had earlier that day. He told me that he was on his way home to show me and then I hung up the phone.”

The happy dad checked the scratch-off at the retailer four times before he hurried home and ran into the house. After seeing the expression on his face, his wife knew that the conversation they had earlier was no joke.

They haven’t told their children about their big win but they plan to use the prize to take a family trip to see relatives in Georgia. They also plan to pay off their car loan, pay down some bills and buy Christmas gifts for their unsuspecting kids.

The Super Bonus Bucks game still has plenty of prizes awaiting discovery. Players can search for the three $50,000 remaining top prizes, eight $5,000 prizes and 16 $1,000 prizes.

The lucky Lottery retailer is also a winner. Exxon located at 7106 Martin Luther King Jr. Highway in Landover earned a $500 bonus from the Lottery for selling a top-prize winning scratch-off in the game.