Upper Marlboro player had planned to play Cash4Life
A loyal Maryland Lottery player knows his games as well as he knows his favorite Lottery retailers and their employees. So, when a new store clerk gave him a ticket for the wrong game and tried but couldn’t void the ticket, the Upper Marlboro resident accepted the employee’s profuse apologies and continued on his way home with one very lucky Multi-Match ticket in hand.
Little did he know that the $10 quick-pick ticket in his possession would win a $580,000 jackpot in the Sept. 11 drawing. “This is the biggest prize of my life,” he said, sitting with his wife in the Winner’s Circle at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore. The happy husband said he has read a lot of Lottery winner stories and just cannot believe it is his turn to tell the story of a win that his wife described as “divine intervention.”
His story begins with the Prince George’s County man stopping at Campus Way Exxon in Upper Marlboro to buy Cash4Life tickets. “I gave him the money and said, ‘I want to buy five Cash4Life tickets,’” the winner recalled. “The attendant made a mistake and gave me a Multi-Match ticket instead. I was like, ‘Oh, a new guy.’ He was so apologetic.”
The lucky dad, who does play Multi-Match from time to time, decided to kindly accept the Multi-Match ticket. Days later, he was leaving for work at 5:30 a.m. when he decided to check the ticket for a win using the Lottery mobile app. An astonishing message directed him to take the ticket to the Lottery. Not certain that he really won the jackpot, the player decided to verify the big win. “On the way home from work that night, I stopped by the retailer and scanned it. I took a picture of the message to prove it was true.”
His wife confesses that she thought he was pulling a prank on her when he first shared his great news. She wasn’t convinced until she saw the photo of the winning message on his phone. The wife couldn’t sleep at all that night, she said, thinking about what they could do with the prize. His first thoughts were for his children and to help others.
“If anyone deserves this, it is him,” the wife said. “He is a hard-working man, a good husband and a good father.”
They plan to pay off a college loan for one of their children, pay bills and start a new family-run healthcare business. She works in the healthcare field and wants to focus on helping geriatric patients.
Now that they have turned the lucky ticket over to the Lottery, the winner said, he is very relieved. “I will sleep very well tonight,” he said.
For its role in the lucky sale, Campus Way Exxon located at 10350 Campus Way South in Prince George’s County will receive a $1,000 bonus from the Lottery. This is the sixth Multi-Match jackpot-winning ticket sold in 2023.
