Lots of Hagerstown lottery winners — and lots of people interested in their stories

There are two people in Washington County who are each $50,000 richer thanks to the Maryland Lottery.

And the readers of The Herald-Mail — at least those online — were eager to learn about it.

First, there was the anonymous woman who recycled the numbers she played on a previous Powerball drawing for the Oct. 11 drawing that was worth $1.765 billion.

Granted, she didn't hit the jackpot, but she had four white balls and the Powerball, earning her $50,000.

Then there was the 39-year-old Hagerstown man who had spent $80 on non-winning Powerball tickets and picked up a $500,000 Crossword scratch-off ticket with the remaining $20 in his pocket.

He, too, didn't hit the jackpot on his scratcher, but did pick up $50,000.

The Herald-Mail had stories about both winners, all of them at or near the top of our most-read stories for the week.

What is it about the lottery that draws our fascination?

I mean, generally, the odds are long that we're going to win anything, let alone the big prize. And yet millions of people spend billions of dollars buying tickets.

Dan Field, a therapist specializing in gambling addiction treatment, told USA TODAY in August that he thinks it's because the lottery gives people the opportunity to indulge in fantasies about how their lives could change if they win.

"There's this desire to be financially unburdened and free — the fantasy that I'm going to always have enough money to do whatever I want, and no one is going tell me what I do," he said in the article. "That fantasy can become almost an obsession for some people."

To be fair, my wife and I did a little dreaming when we bought our Powerball ticket. With $1.765 billion — $770 million in a lump sum — we'd pay off bills for family, sock away money for our daughters' college and beyond, then spend the rest helping those who need it more than we do.

There might be a steak dinner in there, too.

We don't play very often, so the likelihood of us striking it rich is slim. But it sure seems like a lot of folks in Washington County are buying tickets.

Exact figures aren't easily sussed out, but based on a quick search of our archives, there've been about a dozen winning tickets worth at least $50,000 sold in Washington County over the past year. If we were to include $10,000 and $20,000 prizes, I'm certain there'd be about a dozen more.

So if you buy lottery tickets and scratchers on the regular, I wish you luck. If you win the big prize, we'd love to write a story about you.

And I'm positive our readers would love to read it.

Joseph Deinlein is the executive editor of The Herald-Mail. Email him at jdeinlein@herald-mail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Maryland Lottery winners get big payouts — and our readers love it