“Two Tired Teachers” can sleep better with $50,000 prize from the Oct. 29 Powerball drawing.
Leads to third-tier prize in Oct. 29 drawing
“Two Tired Teachers” from Harford County can thank a malfunctioning coffee machine and Lady Luck for their $50,000 Powerball payoff. The husband and wife were on the way to a friend’s house when they stopped to buy coffee and a Powerball ticket at Wawa #581 located at 3500 Woodsdale Road in Abingdon.
The wife was waiting in line to buy a quick-pick ticket while the husband tried to get coffee from a malfunctioning machine. The wife left the line to help him with the brew and then got back into line to buy the ticket.
“If it wasn’t for the coffee machine, I don’t think we would have won,” she said, explaining that they bought a $10 ticket with random numbers generated by the terminal. Had she stayed in line, the ticket’s random numbers may have been different digits. The couple completed their purchases and continued on their way to a Major League Baseball World Series party in Annapolis. They forgot all about the ticket.
The Abingdon pair did not check the ticket until 12:45 a.m. on Sunday morning. Since they don’t have the Lottery app, the wife said she looked at the winning numbers on her phone and saw many matching numbers on their ticket. “I looked at it and got all but one number, but didn’t know how much we had won,” she said.
“When I looked it up, it said $50,000,” the husband added.
The “Two Tired Teachers” work at a Baltimore County middle and high school. They have no immediate plans for spending the prize, but say they will probably use it to pay off some of their loans.
The wife doesn’t play Powerball on a regular basis and did so because she was intrigued by the chance to win an estimated $1 billion jackpot. “I guess I am only playing so I can retire,” the wife said, laughing.
The new jackpot chaser will get another opportunity to win – along with everyone else – in the Saturday, Nov. 5 drawing. The Powerball jackpot has rolled to an estimated annuity of $1.5 billion with an estimated cash value of $745.9 million.
