SACRAMENTO – California Lottery officials announced today that the SuperLOTTO Plus® jackpot has rolled to $82 million for Saturday night’s draw, giving everyday Californians a chance to hit it big and become instant multi-millionaires.
Anyone who buys a ticket can win. Lottery millionaires have been crowned from all walks of life. You could be next.
Patricia Frierson was one average Californian who won a life-changing $91 million SuperLOTTO jackpot. The day she bought her ticket was a day much like any other for Frierson, a 55-year-old widow who worked the late shift at Rhodia, Inc., a chemical processing plant. After coming home late to watch the evening news to get the winning SuperLOTTO numbers, she was completely surprised. “I knew that some of those numbers were mine,” Frierson said. “I was sure I had won at least $15!” It wasn’t until later that she realized she had actually won the jackpot. Frierson has since appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show and bought a dream house on the beach with her winnings.
Steve and Debi Cifelli didn’t expect that they would win either. It was only the second time the newlyweds, a middle school counselor and a non-profit child advocate, played SuperLOTTO Plus, and they walked away with the $27 million jackpot. “While coming back from a conference near Palm Springs, I had a sudden feeling, an intuition… that we should play. So we put down $20. I’m sure glad we did,” said Steve. The Cifelli’s have used their winnings to create a foundation that supports the “Garden of Angels,” a program which funds burials for unidentified infants.
In addition to individual jackpot winners, California businesses and education benefit too. A retailer who sells a single winning $82 million ticket will receive a $410,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket. Education sees 34 cents of every ticket sold and with a jackpot of this size means that approximately $49 million will be going to schools. Last year, the California Lottery contributed more than $1.1 billion to education and has provided more than $1 billion annually to California schools for the last five years.
SuperLOTTO Plus can be played at approximately 18,000 retail business establishments around California. The SuperLOTTO Plus draw takes place each Wednesday and Saturday night at 7:58 p.m. Players may purchase tickets until 7:45 p.m. on the night of the draw.