Hyattsville Carpenter Carves Out $10,000 Lottery Win

HYATTSVILLE, MD — A 36-year-old Prince George’s County carpenter put the finishing touches on his $10,000 Maryland Lottery scratch-off win by visiting Lottery headquarters in Baltimore this week to claim his second-tier prize.

The Lottery luck he encountered with the $250,000 High Rollers Club game will have a significant impact on his life, said the grateful winner. His big win came while getting a bite to eat at the King Kong Restaurant at 2350 University Boulevard in Adelphi. The worker recalls that the Lottery instant ticket vending machine in the restaurant caught his eye.

“I had exactly $10 after paying for my dinner so I picked out a $10 game,” he said in a lottery news release. “It just felt right.”

Not five seconds into playing his scratch-off, he uncovered his first match for a $500 win.

“I almost shouted but didn’t want anyone there to know, so I stopped and headed out to my car,” he said. It was there that the remainder of his $10,000 showed up and he felt safe to express his joy. “I was pretty excited, and pretty loud.”

The Hyattsville man plans to pay bills and even get ahead a bit on his mortgage, which he’s been trying to accomplish for a long while.

“It will be very nice to get some breathing room with these bills, maybe even pay one of them off completely,” he said. “Every day will be a little nicer after that.”

The High Rollers Club game went on sale late last month. All three of its $250,000 top-prize tickets remain unclaimed as well as eight more $10,000 second-tier prizes.