A Charles County electrician says a nagging feeling saved him from missing out on a $50,000 lottery prize — and he’s crediting an inner voice he almost didn’t listen to.
The man had already bought his Pick 5 tickets that morning and stopped at a Wawa convenience store at 6101 Allentown Road in Suitland to grab lunch before heading back to a work site. He was halfway across the parking lot, ready to leave, when something told him to turn around and go back inside.
“I’ve been playing Pick 5 since it first started,” he said. At first, he ignored the pull to go back. “I was hungry. I just wanted to get back to the work site and eat. And besides, I’d already bought my tickets that morning,” he said.
But one thing kept nagging at him. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because there was one of my favorite combinations that I didn’t play,” he said — enough to send him back to the parking spot he’d just left to buy one more ticket.
That decision paid off. When he checked the September 17 Pick 5 results late that night, he covered the numbers with his hand and revealed them one at a time. “I had seen the first two, and they were right. I uncovered the next one and the next and they were right,” he said. Before looking at the final digit, he glanced skyward: “Please be a 4.”
It was a 4. His winning combination, 2-6-2-7-4, is a mix of family birthdays. He was too excited to celebrate right away. “It was so late that I couldn’t celebrate. I didn’t want to wake everybody up,” he said.
The electrician traveled to Maryland Lottery headquarters in Baltimore on September 18 to claim his $50,000 prize. The Wawa that sold the winning ticket receives a $500 bonus — 1% of the prize — for selling it.
