St. Mary’s County resident claims prize for Aug. 28 drawing

A $100,000 Maryland Lottery win will put a St. Mary’s County woman in the driver’s seat of a new vehicle and might speed up her timeframe for retiring from her job at a Washington, D.C., law firm.

The married mother of one said the huge Aug. 28 win on her favorite Lottery game, 5 Card Cash, tops her last big 5 Card Cash win in February 2015. Her husband was in a Baltimore hospital for surgery and she bought a 5 Card Cash ticket while visiting him in the city. She won $1,000 on that lucky ticket!

“The joke back then was, I had to come all the way to Baltimore to get a winning ticket,” she said.

Now, the 67-year-old can boast of finding Lottery luck closer to home. She bought the $100,000 winning ticket at Third Base in Loveville. The aunt of one and great-aunt of two didn’t check to see if the game was a $10,000 instant winner or even watch the drawing that night.

“I was at work when I pulled out the ticket and checked it,” she said. “I called my sister and said, ‘Are you sitting down? Can you look this up?’ I said to her, ‘This can’t be real.’”

Her sister went to mdlottery.com and delivered great news to her sister.

“I had thought it was $10,000,” the winner said. “It was $100,000!”

She followed her family’s advice and both signed and hid the winning ticket. “I put it in a baggie,” she said, “and hid it in the bottom of the grandfather clock. We would come home from work every day and I would check it!”

Her lucky retailer is also a winner. Third Base, located at 28085 Point Lookout Road in Loveville, will receive a $1,000 bonus for selling a winning ticket of $10,000 and up in the 5 Card Cash game.

5 Card Cash is a $2 daily game that has both an instant win feature and a daily drawing. Each ticket features five randomly selected cards from a standard deck of 52 playing cards. If your ticket shows a Poker hand of a pair of Jacks or better, you instantly win the prize for that hand. Each evening, the Lottery draws five cards from a standard 52-card deck. You win by matching 2, 3, 4 or 5 of the randomly drawn cards including the same suit and rank.