Dad wins $50,004 Powerball prize, son’s team wins lacrosse tournament
Two members of a Massachusetts family who traveled to Maryland last weekend for a lacrosse tournament both went home big winners.
The son’s team won the tournament while his dad went home with a $50,004 winning Powerball ticket in his pocket. Earlier, the husband and his wife had discussed the growing Powerball jackpot and whether to try their luck in Maryland.
“Once Powerball gets over a billion dollars, we’re like, ‘We should buy a few tickets,’” he said. “I never heard of anybody winning Powerball in Massachusetts.” The couple, who live in a small town near Foxborough, had heard that Maryland was a lucky Powerball state. “My wife said, ‘Yes, that’s a good idea. You should get some tickets.’”
In fact, Maryland is home to three Powerball jackpots won in 2021 and 2011. This year, Maryland has sold five second-tier winning tickets worth $1 million, one $500,000 Double Play second-tier ticket, 65 third-tier prizes between $50,000 and $150,000 and nine Double Play prizes between $50,000 and $150,000. And whether the Massachusetts man realized it or not, his home state has been lucky too. The sixth-largest jackpot in Powerball history, a $758.7 million prize, was won in Massachusetts in 2017.
Once they arrived in Maryland and got settled into their hotel, the husband stopped at Emmorton Exxon located at 1804 Edgewood Road in Edgewood to buy Powerball tickets for the Oct. 7 drawing, with the jackpot sitting at $1.4 billion.
“I went back the next morning to see if I won anything,” said the father of two. He scanned his tickets at the Lottery vending machine first and one of them didn’t show a winning amount. It did say, “See Lottery. Two other tickets carried $12 and $8 prizes. The glad dad went to the ticket checker at the store’s counter and scanned the third quick-pick ticket there, only to see a message that he won an eye-popping $50,004.
“A guy who was near me said, ‘Did you win something big?’ and I said I had no clue,” recalled the winner, adding that he quietly left the store and looked up the winning numbers on his phone to verify the prize amount. His happy family returned to Massachusetts as planned, and this week, the dad made a solo trip back to Maryland to claim his prize. He and his wife plan to put the money into the bank for now. With his son on a travel lacrosse team and his daughter into horseback riding, he said there are plenty of possible uses for the windfall.
