BALTIMORE, MD—She’s a daily Pick 4 player, a Baltimore woman told Maryland Lottery officials on Tuesday when she arrived at headquarters to claim a prize she won three weeks ago. Surprisingly, though, it wasn’t her favorite game that brought about her visit. It seems the recent billion-dollar Mega Millions jackpot run might just have the two games battling for her favor.

The 74-year-old retired medical professional was buying her Pick 4 tickets in late July when the growing excitement about the Mega Millions jackpot convinced her to add one more ticket to her daily purchase.

“Everyone was talking about it. The jackpot was all over the news,” she explained.

Indeed, that jackpot would eventually rise all the way to $1.602 billion, the largest in the game’s history, before being won on August 8th.

When she first compared her Mega Millions ticket to the winning numbers she had written down and found four matches plus the Mega Ball, she was sure that she had made a mistake.

“I knew that I’d either written down the wrong numbers or was reading the ticket incorrectly.” After double-checking and finding no error, she looked to see what the prize would bring. “When I saw that it was $40,000, I couldn’t believe it. I called my husband at work, I called my daughter….it was just so exciting.”

The third-tier Mega Millions prize is $10,000, but the lucky winner had added the Megaplier feature to her ticket which multiplied her winnings by four.

The Baltimore City resident bought her winning ticket at the Giant located at 8100 Loch Raven Boulevard. She plans to buy new tires for her car first, and then decide with her family what to do next. She told us that she’s very grateful for the $40,000 Mega Millions prize – the most money she has ever won. In the next breath, however, the happy winner insisted that she’s still a Pick 4 player.

“This was a one-time thing. I played just because of the jackpot.”