Emily Keidel of Kingsville is $133,586 richer after trying her luck with a FAST PLAY game.
Mother of two sets of twins wins big with Payday game
Coincidence or fate? Lottery luck or the universe helping out? In the end, what matters to Emily Keidel of Kingsville is that she won a $133,586 progressive jackpot playing the FAST PLAY Payday game. And the prize came just in time to help her family hunt for a home for six.
The mother of twin boys and twin girls, who are all now school age, said she and her husband love playing Lottery games but had taken a long break. Then, out of the nowhere, Emily got an urge to try her luck.
“I had a feeling I should play, an itch to play,” she said. “I don’t know what it was.”
The Baltimore County resident visited 7-Eleven #26753 in Baltimore just before 7 a.m. on Jan. 15 to buy a cup of coffee and a few games. “I had $20 and I bought four of the $5 Payday games,” she said. The My Lottery Rewards member checked for a win on each ticket while still in the store and then scanned each ticket into her Rewards account. Her Lottery smartphone app told her the first three of the Payday tickets were not winners. But she saw a surprising message on the fourth ticket.
“It was, ‘No winner,’ ‘No winner,’ ‘No winner’ and the last one said to bring the ticket to the retailer. It confused me.”
The 7-Eleven clerk scanned the ticket and quietly shared news of her $133,586 win. The Payday game has a progressive jackpot that starts at $40,000 and grows with the sale of each ticket until a lucky player buys a progressive jackpot-winning ticket. The shocked mom said she started visibly shaking after hearing the news.
“He had to get me a stool to sit on because my knees were buckling,” Emily said. “I sat there at the 7-Eleven and talked to the clerk for 20 minutes. I was shaking so much that I didn’t think it was safe to drive.”
When she returned home, Emily sent her sons to bounce on the bed to wake up her husband so she could talk with him. “I won the Lottery!” she said, showing him the winning ticket. “I said, ‘This is real!’ He actually teared up.”
The big win is life changing for the couple, who had just decided last week to begin searching for a bigger house for their growing family. “This creates a lot more opportunity,” she said.
Her lucky 7-Eleven also is a winner. For selling a jackpot-winning FAST PLAY Payday ticket worth more than $100,000, the store located at 8601 Honeygo Boulevard earns a $1,000 bonus from the Lottery.
The Payday game has 10 more progressive jackpot prizes along with 10 $5,000 second-tier prizes and 40 $1,000 prizes. The $5 game went on sale in June 2020.
