Look in the bottom of a handbag and you’ll never know what you’ll find: crumpled receipts, candy in or out of the wrapper, a cell phone, a hairbrush or crumbs from a half-eaten snack.
For a local woman, the bottom of her purse revealed something less mundane: a forgotten scratch-off ticket worth $250,000.
The woman, whose name is not being revealed, told Maryland Lottery officials she rarely plays scratch-offs, but purchased a $10 Cash game ticket during a recent lunch break in Reisterstown. A co-worker who had joined her picked out a scratch-off ticket, and the 39-year-old Westminster resident followed suit, tucking it away in her purse.
A week later she remembered the purchase, retrieved the ticket and began scratching.
None of the winning numbers she revealed matched any of the numbers below.
But then she scratched off a “win all” symbol. And that delivered every prize listed on the ticket — 25 separate $10,000 prizes.
She said she scanned the ticket with a lottery app, where her winnings were confirmed.
Her husband had difficulty believing their fate, even while driving to lottery headquarters to claim the prize.
The winning ticket was sold at Franklin Boulevard Exxon in Reisterstown, where manager Muhammad Kahn said it was the largest winning ticket sold at the station. While Kahn said he doesn’t know the winner well, he is familiar with her husband who frequently purchases lottery tickets at his station. “She was very lucky,” Kahn said.
This was the second $250,000 top prize won since the Md. Lottery launched the Cash game in February.
The winner told lottery officials she isn’t certain how she will put the prize to use, but thinks she may boost her retirement savings and plan a trip somewhere warm.
