A dreary Monday morning for everyone else was a bright and exciting day for one lucky Baltimore woman. She visited Maryland Lottery headquarters to claim a $20,000 prize!
The $2 $20,000 Jackpot instant ticket gave this weekly player her first big win. The 50-year-old found her Lottery luck at Newsmart in Baltimore, where she is friendly with the cashier. Our player repeated her Saturday ritual of buying $20 worth of scratch-offs and included the $20,000 Jackpot game. She selected it because that book of scratch-offs had only a few instant tickets left.
“All the money is either in the start of the roll or at the end,” she said, explaining her game-playing strategy. “There’s no money in the middle.”
The dedicated player opted to scratch the Prize-Check boxes on her instant tickets instead of the whole ticket and began scanning for a winner. After breezing through five non-winning scratch-offs, she did a double take when she saw she won the $20,000 top prize! “I had to have the cashier check it because I couldn’t believe it!”
The generous winner plans to use her windfall to help her four children financially. Another winner in this story is the retailer that sold the winning ticket. Newsmart located at 100 South Charles Street earned a $200 bonus for selling a top-prize scratch-off in the game.
The $20,000 Jackpot instant ticket still has three unclaimed $20,000 prizes along with thousands of others ranging from $2 to $5,000.