La Plata, MD — — The Maryland Lottery’s wonderful Wizard of Oz ticket has a La Plata mother of three seeing green – $50,000 worth!
The Charles County resident found her Lottery luck playing a $5 scratch-off she bought at the La Plata Safeway. The federal government retiree, who is in her 70s, was there on a mission to buy cranberry sauce and received change from her small grocery purchase. A longtime scratch-off fan, she headed to the Lottery instant ticket vending machine on her way out to buy one of the new $5 tickets with her change.
The Wizard of Oz tickets that just launched Sept. 21 caught her eye and she left the store with that scratch-off in hand.
What happened next, when she scratched the ticket, left her stunned.
“I about had a heart attack,” she said, adding that her next step was to drive to her son’s workplace, which was nearby, to show him her ticket.
“I said, ‘Am I seeing right? Am I dreaming?’” she asked her son.
The happy winner plans to put her prize in the bank to spend later. She doesn’t plan to tell anyone other than her son about her win, and the same goes for disclosing her winning ticket’s hiding place. After all, who knows? One day she might have another top-prize ticket and need to hide it until she can come to Lottery headquarters, she said. This time, nearly a week passed before she was able to come to Baltimore to claim her prize. But she peeked at her hidden ticket several times to be certain it was still safe.
“I was a nervous wreck,” she said.
Our winner is such a loyal Lottery player that for Mothers’ Day, her son bought her the perfect gift – a huge assortment of scratch-offs that she tackled all at once. Her favorites are the $2 and $3 games, she said.
For selling the top-prize ticket, Safeway #1938 at 40 Shining Willow Way in La Plata receives a $500 bonus from the Lottery. This game still has plenty of top-level prizes awaiting discovery at Lottery retailers. Try your luck to find one of five $50,000 top-prize winners, nine $5,000 winning tickets and 40 $1,000 winning tickets.