During an excursion to Dewey Beach in Delaware, a couple from Virginia had been planning to buy tickets for the Powerball drawing. They ended up stopping for gas and necessities on their way home, bought five combinations and won a third-tier $50,000 prize in the July 12 drawing.
“Thirty-five dollars is the most I’ve ever won before. It was a happy surprise,” the husband said July 31 after claiming the prize. The ticket purchase came at Bayside Xtra Mart at 2120 Piney Creek Road in Chester. Though the purchase cost $10 for the five quick pick combinations, “we really only needed one,” the husband said. The winning combination was the first one on the ticket slip.
The two are casual players who enjoy pondering the possibilities of winning big.
“We just buy when we think of it for fun. We never really expect to win,” he said.
The tickets were stashed away for the trek home. The next day, the wife was checking the numbers on the tickets against the winning numbers posted and realized one of the lines matched four of the first five balls drawn. She asked her daughter what that was good for, and the answer was $100. Then the wife noticed they also matched the Powerball number, and boosted the prize by a factor of 500.
Though grinning broadly about the five-digit win, the husband, who is originally from Maryland, briefly lamented having missed a multi-million dollar prize by a single ball.
There aren’t any exciting plans for the winnings. The two have five grown children, two of whom are college-age, so, in a sense, the money is already spent.
The winning couple says they’ll continue playing lottery games, though his initial thought was, “I’m probably never going to come that close to winning the jackpot again.” A relative, however, cautioned him against negative thinking, saying now he’s got winning luck on his side.
