A man from Nottingham whose friends and co-workers are avid Maryland Lottery players one-upped his lunch buddies with a $57,777 win using his casual approach to buying tickets.
“I play a little bit. A couple buddies of mine play all the time,” he said July 30 when he claimed the windfall at Maryland Lottery headquarters.
Typically, he and some co-workers have lunch together, but on a recent workday, he found himself alone at the Ashland Café at 10810 York Road in Cockeysville.
“There was no one to eat lunch with, so I got four scratch-off tickets to kill time,” he said. But then his lunch order was done, so he stashed his tickets and headed back to the office. A little while later, he realized he hadn’t scratched the tickets, so he pulled them out and the first one, a Lucky 7s Tripler, had an auto-win 7 symbol in a square for $57,777, the top prize amount.
“I was like, ‘What?’ and I put it aside,” he said. He scratched the others and scanned them with the Lottery app on his phone. Then he scanned the first one and it showed as a big winner.
When he showed his wife, she said, “That’s not real.’”
But it was real, so he made an appointment to claim his prize and texted his lottery playing friends about the win.
The extra money, he says, will come in handy for paying kids tuition and getting finances in good order.
“It’ll let me start putting more in my 401(k),” he said.
Also getting a little extra money is Ashland Café, which receives a bonus of $577.77.
