SACRAMENTO - Autumn came on with a roar on The Big Spin® show with this week’s contestants winning $272,500 in cash prizes. The show, which aired statewide Saturday, September 16, 2006 featured a spectrum of winners from all walks of life, including a twice-lucky grandmother and a student who went into a store to buy milk and ended up $60,000 richer. For these lucky winners, some rather large checks are in the mail waiting for them.
William Velasco, a realtor from Sam Dimas, is one man who knows he has mail from the Lottery coming. "I’ll be greeting my live-in relatives with the question, ‘Do I have mail from the Lottery?’ once again," he joked. Before he appeared on the show, he had always asked his relatives that same question the moment he got home from work. "When they finally told me one day that I did have a notice from the Lottery, right around my birthday, I didn’t believe them and told them to stop pulling my leg," he recalled. Now with a $50,000 win behind him, he plans to invest and help out his brothers and sisters living in the Philippines.
Michael Lane, a student from Redding, only wanted to buy milk for his fiancé but an impulse purchase of a Big Spin Scratchers® ticket landed him a chance to spin The Big Spin wheel for up to $3 million. "I joked with the convenience store clerk when I bought the ticket that I would be on TV. The next day when I scratched the winning ticket while driving I was so shocked I almost rammed into a parked car!" recalled Mr. Lane. His $60,000 win will go towards his Medi-Vac air rescue ambulance training and licensing.
Other big winners of the night included Estrela Nilsen, a retired school secretary from Rescue who won $1,750 on The Big Spin in 2004, and Thomas Jefferis from San Diego. This time around, Ms. Nilsen won $75,000 from the Fantasy 5 Dream Machine this time and promised to retire Betsy, her 23 year-old car. Mr. Jefferis, who won $65,000, plans to make the money "work for him" instead of the other way around.
|
|
|
| Estrela Nilsen |
Rescue |
$75,000 |
| Thomas Jefferis |
San Diego |
$65,000 |
| Michael Lane |
Redding |
$60,000 |
| William Velasco |
San Dimas |
$50,000 |
| Mario Fonseca Sanchez |
Stockton |
$5,000 |
| Thomas Johnson |
Long Beach |
$4,000 |
| Luz Echeverria |
Valencia |
$2,500 |
| Rudy Serna |
Tulare |
$2,000 |
| Ben Puente |
San Diego |
$2,000 |
| Adela Rosado |
Ontario |
$1,750 |
| Michael Lujan |
Porterville |
$1,750 |
| Ignacio Magadan |
Baldwin Park |
$1,750 |
| Manuel Galleguillos |
Arleta |
$1,750 |
| |
TOTAL |
$272,500 |