A Waldorf man’s decades-long habit of picking up a few Powerball tickets a week finally paid off in a big way this spring, and he waited more than two months to cash in.
The Charles County retiree matched four of the first five numbers drawn plus the red Powerball in the May 23 drawing, good for a third-tier prize of $50,000. He held onto the winning ticket until July 27, when his daughter drove him to Maryland Lottery headquarters in Baltimore to claim the prize.
His daughter said her father buys a handful of tickets most weeks simply because he enjoys the anticipation of a possible win. The pair discovered the ticket was a winner after watching an episode of HGTV’s “My Lottery Dream Home” together, when family members reminded him to check his numbers from the May 23 drawing. Asked what keeps him playing, the winner kept it simple: “Just for fun, and looking to get lucky.”
The win hasn’t changed his routine — he says he plans to keep buying tickets in hopes of another lucky draw. As for the $50,000, he told lottery officials he has no immediate plans for it beyond setting it aside while he decides what to do, saying he wants to give the decision plenty of thought before spending any of it.
He bought the winning ticket May 22 at Korner Liquors, a longtime Waldorf beer, wine and spirits shop at 3120 Old Washington Road that has operated in the same Charles County location since 1971. Retailers that sell winning Maryland Lottery tickets typically receive a bonus commission on top of their standard sales cut, an incentive built into the state’s lottery retailer program.
The Waldorf man’s win comes as Powerball’s jackpot has been on an extended climb. No ticket has matched all six numbers since May 2, when two tickets sold in Florida and Texas split a $20 million jackpot, and the prize now stands at an estimated $663 million for Wednesday night’s drawing — with a lump-sum cash option of about $290.4 million — making it the largest Powerball jackpot of 2026 so far, though it trails the $800 million jackpot Mega Millions is set to award in its own drawing the same week.
Third-tier Powerball prizes like the Waldorf man’s require matching four of the five white balls plus the red Powerball, a combination with odds of roughly 1 in 913,000. That’s far more attainable than the jackpot’s 1-in-292.2-million odds, but still rare enough that most regular players go years without hitting it — a pattern the Waldorf winner said matched his own experience after playing for decades without a win worth mentioning.
Maryland Lottery winners have 182 days from the date of a drawing to come forward and claim a prize. Prizes above $600 must be claimed in person at Maryland Lottery headquarters in Baltimore or by mail, while smaller prizes can typically be redeemed directly at a lottery retailer. Powerball tickets cost $2 per play and are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with drawings held every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday night.
Maryland Lottery proceeds flow into the state’s General Fund, helping support public education, health care and other state programs; the lottery has generated tens of billions of dollars for those purposes since it launched in 1973. More than half of every dollar spent on lottery tickets in Maryland stays within the state, a portion of which also funds bonus payouts to the retailers, like Korner Liquors, that sell winning tickets.
The Waldorf man’s story fits a familiar pattern among Maryland Lottery’s third-tier winners: modest, steady players who buy a handful of tickets a week rather than chasing the jackpot with bulk purchases. Lottery officials regularly highlight such wins in part to remind players that meaningful prizes are awarded far more often than jackpots — Maryland alone processes tens of thousands of winning tickets across all of its games each year, the overwhelming majority of them below the six-figure mark. For a longtime regular player like the Waldorf winner, the $50,000 prize represents one of the largest single payouts most casual lottery participants will ever see, even without matching the full six-number combination that triggers a jackpot.
