A small grocery store a few streets from Skid Row, the Los Angeles neighborhood that the UN compares to a refugee camp, has sold the winning lottery ticket on Wednesday with a prize of 1,080 million dollars. The winning numbers were 7-10-11-13-24 of white balls and number 24 of the so-called Powerball, the name of the lottery. It is the sixth largest prize in the history of the United States and the third largest in the history of that type of game, and it has been taken by someone – of unknown identity – who acquired it in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country and who is probably now jumping for joy.
Las Palmas Mini Market, this is the name of the little store run for seven years by Nabor Herrera. His owner didn’t find out the news until he went to work this Thursday morning. At first he thought that all the cameras that were there belonged to the set of some movie. “It was a complete surprise to me,” Herrera told the media. With the million dollar bonus that he will receive for being the seller of the winning ticket, the man, father of four children, intends to use it to go on vacation with his children to Cabo San Lucas, a beach town in Baja California Sur, in Mexico. “I also want to make the store bigger, with more products and better service for people. That is where I am now”, Herrera said.
Due to the rules that regulate this lottery, there is still a long time left – a whole year – to know the identity of the person who bought the winning ticket. During that time, the organizers of the lottery check that the person is someone who deserves the prize. “We have to spend time researching the winner to make sure it’s the [persona] correct”, Carolyn Becker said during the press conference. “Integrity and transparency are incredibly important to us.” Becker has recommended that the winner consider hiring financial and legal advisers to help manage the money. The first thing she has to decide is whether she wants to receive a pre-tax payment of $558 million or a full $1.08 billion over several years.
The jackpot, with a one in 292.2 million chance, is among the largest in history, reaching the stratospheric figure after no one won it last week, set at $900 million. The Powerball record was a $2.04 billion prize, drawn in November, also in California, making this the second time in less than a year that luck has made a Los Angeles County resident a billionaire thanks to the Powerball lottery. The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot was April 19, almost $253 million. Powerball is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.
The narrow market where the prize has been sold is a few blocks from Skid Row, its streets filled with thousands of people sleeping rough. Nearly 12,000 souls live on the sidewalks of its two square kilometers without access to drinking water or toilets. Life expectancy here is 48 years, compared to 80 years for an average Californian. The United Nations (UN) compares it to a refugee camp due to the destitution in which its neighbors live. This situation exposes a bigger and growing problem: the number of homeless people in Los Angeles has increased by 16%.
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The media epicenter has been Herrera, but the real winner is his wife, María Leticia Menjivar, 50, owner of the store who has preferred not to speak to the press, according to the newspaper. Los Angeles Times. Yes, her eldest daughter, Angélica, 35, has done it. At first she couldn’t believe it, she told the press, so she began to check the store’s security cameras through her cell phone, and she saw how more and more television camera crews were arriving. “We started receiving calls at five in the morning, we thought it was spam”, This woman of Salvadoran origin has assured. “We are immigrants, and our family has fought a lot to make this business a success, and this was our dream, to show that it is possible for anyone to achieve it.”
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