 Godfrey Redhi of Owings Mills played his first Powerball game and won $50,000. |
First-time player claims $50,000 third-tier prize
Neuroscientist Godfrey Redhi of Owings Mills bought his first ever Maryland Lottery ticket and wound up one big lucky winner! He’d never even considered playing, but the Powerball jackpot frenzy that swept the nation in January got the best of him.
The Baltimore County resident picked up six tickets from Sam’s Wine & Spirits in Owings Mills on Jan. 12. He let the terminal pick his numbers on five tickets and selected his own numbers for the sixth ticket.
“I saw them in a dream a week or so ago,” Godfrey said, explaining the significance of his numbers. “My late mom was in it (the dream), and, for some reason, so was a car repair shop. And all through it these numbers kept popping in and out.”
The dream must have been a memorable one because those numbers stuck in Godfrey’s head long enough to make it onto that lucky Powerball playslip. “I told my father and my brother about the dream, about how I played those numbers on my ticket. They laughed.”
The 55-year-old federal employee saw the Powerball results the morning after the drawing and recognized several of the winning numbers. He called his brother, a long-time Lottery player, to help him figure out what he’d won. With the help of his wife, the brothers determined that the ticket was worth $50,000.
“We were very calm, the three of us,” Godfrey said. “There are some heart issues in our family so we try to never get too excited. It was definitely tough to do.”
Our lucky scientist, one of 24 Maryland players to buy $50,000 winning tickets in the Jan. 13 Powerball drawing, found his Lottery luck at Sam’s Wine & Spirits at 11130 Reisterstown Road. The state also is welcoming three $1 million winners and one $100,000 winner from that drawing. Godfrey plans to share his prize with his family.