Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A pair of longtime friends visited Maryland Lottery headquarters together when they both scored jackpots from scratch-off tickets.
One of the friends, identified as Maite, told Maryland Lottery officials the saga began in October 2019, when she scratched off a Power 8s ticket.
Maite said she didn't want to cash in the ticket's $100,000 prize until after the New Year, so she kept it a secret from everyone except her husband.
"My husband knows I have won $10,000 before on a scratch-off," she said. "Just a couple of weeks after my $100,000 Power 8s win, I won another $1,800 in prizes at a local casino. In total, I would say I have won over $200,000 playing the Lottery and casino games."
After winning her casino prize, Maite spilled the beans on her scratch-off luck to a longtime friend identified as Kelly Girl.
Kelly Girl said she doesn't play lottery games as often as Maite, but her friend's good luck led her to buy some tickets during a trip to Colonial Liquors in La Plata to buy champagne for New Year's Eve.
"I didn't even think about which tickets I picked," said "Kelly Girl," a mother of one. "I just asked for the tickets that happened to be in boxes with my favorite numbers. By asking the cashier for scratch-offs in the boxes labeled 3 and 6, I was given the $10 Winter Cash Tripler and $20 2020 Cash tickets."
The 2020 Cash ticket earned Kelly Girl a $20,200 top prize.
The friends of 20 years traveled together to lottery headquarters in Baltimore this week to collect their respective jackpots.