In Hyattsville, Maryland, the 7-Eleven on Sheriff Road is located in a strip that most drivers pass without giving it much thought. Convenience stores like this one along suburban corridors exist on the periphery of everyday life, serving as a place to stop before a shift, run a quick errand in between commitments, cash in on a little victory, and, if the mood strikes, purchase an additional ticket. Maurice Williams made the same stop there on a Tuesday morning in early May. He was a 59-year-old Washington, D.C. school bus driver who had an errand to run before work. He took $5 million with him.
Williams had previously won $50 on a $5,000,000 LUXE scratch-off ticket; the game is at the upper end of Maryland’s scratch-off market and costs $50 to play. After picking up his prize at the store, he sat in his car and used the fifty dollars to purchase another ticket. He was almost unaware of what he possessed. 59 was the matching number. It had only been 59 days since his birthday. He gazed at it long enough for the coincidence to begin to seem more than coincidental.
He said to Maryland Lottery officials, “I didn’t realize I had a matching number at first, until I scanned it.” “It’s crazy because the matching number was 59 and I just turned 59 the other day.”
There are probably very few people who win $5 million in any way and then go to work that same morning. Williams is currently a member of that group. To let his mother know what had happened, he gave her a call. She assisted in calming him. The kids on that bus were probably unaware that their driver had suddenly become a millionaire between the store and the first pickup, so he put the ticket in a secure location and drove his route. He made an appointment to pick up his winnings by calling the Maryland Lottery during his break.
“I just sat there stuck; I mean, I couldn’t believe it,” he replied. “I had to get my head straight.”
It wasn’t until he entered the Maryland Lottery’s Claim Center on May 5 and saw the large check that he began to believe it. The night before, he had tossed and turned. In a way that the scan at the convenience store hadn’t quite been able to, something about holding that piece of paper and standing in the building made it seem real. Those present said he was grinning the entire time.
The headline doesn’t fully convey what Williams wants to do with the money. He intends to purchase a home for his mother. Not a car, not a trip, not an investment portfolio—that’s the first item on the list. a home for his mom. He intends to carefully save the remaining amount while he determines the best course of action. That strategy has a methodical quality that is consistent with the rest of the narrative: a man who wins five million dollars, completes his shift, calls his mother first, and attends an appointment during his lunch break. Scrambling and impulsivity are absent. He simply carried out his plan and resolved the remaining issues.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of this story’s appeal is also what makes it so unremarkable. Williams wasn’t using lottery tickets as a big ploy. He was heading to work after cashing a fifty-dollar winnings from a game he had already played once and using the money to purchase another ticket. There are still two unclaimed grand prize slots in the $5,000,000 LUXE game, which means that two more people in Maryland may have the same morning. It’s unclear if any of them will complete their shift afterward.
