Lottery player worried about retirement — then won big. ‘Happiness flooded in’
An office worker was worried about her approaching retirement — and then she won $50,000 in the lottery.
Now, “I’m feeling much better about things,” she told Maryland Lottery officials, according to a July 23 news release.
The woman, from Queen Anne’s County, bought her winning Pick 5 ticket for the July 18 midday drawing at a gas station in Gaithersburg, lottery officials said.
She usually goes for scratch-off tickets, and she did grab a couple of those.
But, “every once in a while, I try something different,” she told lottery officials, so she threw the Pick 5 in as well.
When she learned she’d won, “I refused to believe it,” she said, per the release. “I knew what I was seeing. I knew what my Lottery app was telling me. I just wouldn’t let myself accept that it had happened.”
But, eventually, “the happiness flooded in,” she told lottery officials.
Gaithersburg is about a 45-mile drive southwest from Baltimore.
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Lottery player worried about retirement — then won big. ‘Happiness flooded in’."
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