Stepmom scratched her lottery ticket and ‘went ghost white.’ Now she has big plans
Danielle Schwanke has a lot on her plate.
The medical assistant has two stepchildren, eight cats and one dog, and she’s a pet foster parent, so she currently has five extra pets at home, she told officials, according to an Aug. 24 Maryland Lottery news release.
Schwanke was recently rushing to grab medicine at a grocery store in Severna Park before it closed when something caught her eye: the lottery vending machine, officials said. So she made a quick stop and bought $20 worth of scratch-off tickets for her and her boyfriend.
The stepmom said she waited until later that evening to scratch her ticket. She was shocked by what she found on one of her Red Hot Cash tickets.
“I know I went ghost white,” Schwanke told officials. “I thought, this has to be a mistake.”
Schwanke had won a $30,000 top prize, officials said. She was so unsure of her ticket that she woke her boyfriend up and asked him to double check her prize.
“Even though it was right in our faces, we were convinced it could not be a winner,” Schwanke told officials.
The prize left Schwanke too shocked and nervous to sleep, she said in the release.
“I have a reputation of being clumsy, so I made sure I didn’t do anything crazy with the ticket,” she told officials.
The next morning, Schwanke went to a store as early as she could and confirmed her prize, according to officials. Now, she plans to donate a portion of her prize to a local animal shelter. She’ll put the rest toward her stepkids and her savings.
Schwanke’s winning ticket came from a Giant in Severna Park, which is about 20 miles southeast of Baltimore.
This story was originally published August 24, 2023 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Stepmom scratched her lottery ticket and ‘went ghost white.’ Now she has big plans."
