CFW Commissioners and representatives from Montgomery County Public Libraries judged over 30 entries ranging from short stories to drawings based on creativity and content. Winners were selected from four categories: elementary, middle, high school, and adult. The 2022 winners and honorable mention recipients are:
Elementary
“It helps save lives. Mine, as well as others – like my family,” she said. Milagro told Lottery officials that she is looking for a house and the $50,000 prize will go toward her dream of home ownership. “I’m also appreciative of the program and what it has done to encourage others to get the vaccine,” she said. Milagro is one of 11 VaxCash 2.0 winners so far, and one of 10 winners of $50,000. The promotion’s first drawing on Feb. 15 awarded a $500,000 prize to a Dundalk woman. On May 3, a single winner will be selected for a grand prize of $1 million.
The VaxCash 2.0 promotion, which was announced by Gov. Larry Hogan on Feb. 8, is awarding $2 million in cash prizes in weekly drawings from Feb. 15 through today, May 3. VaxCash 2.0 aims to incentivize Marylanders to get COVID-19 booster shots. All Maryland residents 18 and older who had received an initial shot(s) and a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine at eligible facilities in Maryland at any time were eligible to win. No registration or entry was needed.
Dogfish Head Alehouse, which opened its first location at 800 W. Diamond Ave in Gaithersburg in 2005, announced it has donated a combined $1,000,000 to charity over the past 17 years between its three locations.
Dogfish Head Alehouses, which are owned and operated independent from the Dogfish Head brewery in Milton, DE through a licensing agreement, announced recently that it will be closing its Falls Church, VA location at 6220 Leesburg Pike in the Seven Corners Shopping Center. The restaurant says it was unable to come to terms with the property owner when it came time to renew its lease. The last day of service will be on May 15. The Dogfish Alehouse locations at 800 W. Diamond Ave in Gaithersburg and 13041 Lee Jackson Memorial Hwy in Fairfax, VA will remain open.
A Gaithersburg man is $30,000 richer after purchasing a scratch-off ticket from Brighton Beer & Wine at 225 Muddy Branch Rd in Gaithersburg.
Full details from the Maryland Lottery below:
Radio station Hot 99.5 (WIHT FM) is running a tournament to determine “Who is the best high school in the DMV?”
Wheaton High School is currently facing off against Osbourn Park High School (Manassas, VA) in the final round.
On Friday, March 25, the Montgomery County Police Department team participated in the annual Special Olympics Maryland Police Plunge. The event takes place each year at Sandy Point State Park on the Chesapeake Bay.
According to organizers, the first Police Plunge took place in 2012 and raised over $100,000. Since then, agencies have raised over $2 million dollars. Learn more at www.plungemd.com
The United States Senate passed the “Sunshine Protection Act” by unanimous consent today. The bill would make Daylight Saving permanent and put an end to having to change your clocks twice a year. The bill will now need to pass through the House, before going to President Biden. According to the H.R.69 – Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, this bill makes daylight savings time the new, permanent standard time. States with areas exempt from daylight savings time may choose the standard time for those areas.
The bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act was introduced by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ed Markey (D-MA). Daylight Saving Time began in the U.S. in 1918 and was extended by four weeks in 2007. Daylight saving time began this year this past Sunday, March 13, and lasts until November, 6.
Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, grew up in Kensington. He is the youngest of five brothers born to William and Jayne Plank. His father was a prominent real estate developer who passed away in 1993. A local project of his was the Al Marah subdivision off River Road, just off of exit 39 on the Beltway. His mother was the mayor of Kensington for 8 years, from 1974-1982. She went on to direct the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs at the United States Department of State under President Ronald Reagan, and was a real estate broker until the early 2000s.
Plank grew up playing youth football with the Maplewood Sports Association (photo below). He even featured a Maplewood team in an Under Armour commercial. While growing up in Kensington, Plank has mentioned that one of his favorite places to eat was Continental– a family owned and operated restaurant that has been serving the Kensington community since 1957. Plank attended Georgetown Preparatory School, but left the school due to poor academic performance and behavioral issues. According to Forbes, he was thrown out of private high school after failing two classes and for his part in what Forbes described as a “drunken brawl” with football players from Georgetown University.
Kiki Rice, the No. 2 women’s basketball recruit in the Class of 2022, has been named the 2022 Naismith Girls’ High School Player of the Year.
Rice, a 5’11 Bethesda resident, has helped lead Sidwell Friends to an undefeated record and #1 ranking in the nation. Named for the inventor of the game, the Naismith award is considered among the highest—if not the highest—award in high school and college basketball. “My teammates and my coaches played a huge role in me getting this award,” Rice said in an article on the Sidwell Friends website. “It’s an individual award, but someone who isn’t on a great team and who isn’t being pushed every day is not going to win this award.”
The CBS sitcom ‘Ghosts’ debuted in October of last year and was recently renewed for a second season. Coincidentally, it stars two actors who graduated from Wootton High School in Rockville. The show is about a married couple in New York, Samantha and Jay, who believe that their dreams have come true when they inherit a beautiful country home. They soon find that it is falling apart and inhabited by ghosts who died on the mansion’s grounds and are now bound to the area until they can reach the afterlife. Jay cannot see or hear the ghosts, but Samantha, after having a near-death experience, can.
Jay, the male lead, is portrayed by Utkarsh Ambudkar. Ambudkar was born in nearby Baltimore, but was raised in Rockville while his parents worked at NIH in Bethesda. The 38 year old actor graduated from Wootton High School and is well known for his roles as a VJ for MTV Desi, Donald in Pitch Perfect, Rishi in the Mindy Project, Skatch in Mulan, and more. Below you’ll see Ambudkar’s rap from the 2020 Oscars.
Isaac Applebaum has made it to the Jeopardy! College finals. He is a junior at Stanford University, majoring in Computational Biology. Applebaum is from Bethesda and graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in 2019, where he also played on the baseball team and ran cross country. Applebaum is also a musician, a jazz pianist, which he says is a big part of his identity.
In the first quarterfinals matchup of the two-week Jeopardy College Championship, Applebaum pulled off a comeback win to defeat Gus Guszkowski of Dartmouth and Catherine Zhang of Cornell. He won by correctly identifying Charles Torrey as the abolitionist thought to have given the Underground Railroad its name during final Jeopardy.