Karen L., of Rosedale, credits her late mother for her $1 million Maryland Lottery Holiday Raffle win, as the drawing was held on her mom’s birthday.
The new year got off to a prosperous start for Karen L. of Rosedale, who became a millionaire with the Jan. 2 Maryland Lottery Holiday Raffle drawing and attributes her good fortune to her late mother.
She claimed her prize Jan. 7 at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore and gave a little insight into her winning ways.
She had the number 136188, but the telling number is Jan. 2, which was both the drawing date and her mom’s birthday.
“I think it is my mom again. She is helping me with my retirement,” Karen said with a smile.
Though the drawing was on Jan. 2, the Karen held off on checking her ticket until Jan. 5, and when she scanned it using the Maryland Lottery app, she got the message: “Go to Lottery.”
At first, she figured she was lucky enough to have hit for one of the 10 second-tier $100,000 prizes, but held out hope it was for the big prize. She took her winning ticket to a store and, before checking, the clerk made a prediction.
“She said to me, ‘It’s you. I know it’s you,’” Karen recalled. The clerk scanned the ticket and her prediction was correct: the prize was revealed to be $1 million.
The Baltimore County resident said she sets a budget every week and usually purchases Powerball, Mega Millions and scratch-off tickets, but was excited at the prospect of buying a $20 ticket for the first Holiday Raffle.
Karen has a full list of plans for her prize money, including buying a car, some home renovations, squaring her finances and savings.
“It still hasn’t hit me yet,” she said.
The store that sold Karen the winning ticket was the 7-Eleven at 1801 Reisterstown Road in Pikesville.
The Maryland Lottery Holiday Raffle ran Nov. 3 through Jan. 1, with winning numbers drawn on Jan. 2, including for a top prize of $1 million and 10 prizes of $100,000 each. The winning numbers – including 10,000 for prizes of $50 to $500 – were selected from among the 237,206 sequentially numbered tickets sold.
Tickets, numbered 000001 through 237206, were $20 each and were available at Maryland Lottery retailers across the state.
A list of all winning numbers is available on the Holiday Raffle page at mdlottery.com, and the page also has a search tool that can be used to check specific numbers to see if they are winners. Holiday Raffle tickets can also be checked by scanning them with the Maryland Lottery app, or at any Lottery retailer. Winners have 182 days from Jan. 2 to claim their prizes.
