SACRAMENTO – A group of 20 California Lottery players came forward today as the lucky winners of the $72 Million SuperLOTTO Plus® jackpot from Saturday, March 17, 2007!
The group has played the same numbers since 1996 and never lost faith that they would someday win. Gloria Madriz is one of the pool leaders and purchased the tickets for the group every week. She was in Tahoe over the weekend, but upon her return was more than pleasantly surprised when she discovered her group had the winning ticket. This morning the excitement escalated when she contacted the entire group.
“I called a friend, who is also in the group, to double check the numbers and we could not believe it! This seems unreal,” said Madriz. “Three of our 20 members have retired, but still continued to play part as part of our group.”
This enthusiastic group of 20 plays SuperLOTTO Plus every week. “There were a few months when I paid to keep another one of my group members in the pool after she had a serious car accident,” said Jackie Sims. “I collected the money every week and Gloria would buy our tickets.”
Ms. Mardriz purchased the winning SuperLOTTO Plus ticket at Lichine’s Liquor in Sacramento’s Land Park area. For selling the winning ticket, the store will receive a retailer bonus of $360,000. This was the 3rd SuperLOTTO Plus jackpot ticket sold at Lichine’s.
All winners, except those who are retired of course, plan to continue to work. Some said that they hope to pay off their mortgages with their winnings and others to just take a fantastic trip. The winners decided to take the cash option that amounts to approximately $40 million.
The 20 lucky members of “The Lotto Group” were: Karen Calamia, Lauren Chow, Nancy Cook, Paul DeSilva, Sally Dominguez, Elizabeth Gromek, Angela Johnson, Anna Joyal, Jennifer Juarez, Linda Knight-Wilson, Nova Krueger, Pat Luck, Gloria Madriz, Judy Masuda, Hermie Oliveros, Susan Rodriguez, Jackie Sims, Francee Spring, Judy Taniguchi, and Lorena Van-Rein. All are residents of the Sacramento area.
The California Lottery contributes at least 34 cents of every dollar that players spend on Lottery products to public education. The Lottery contributed $1.28 billion to public education in 2005-06 out of sales of $3.58 billion, the sixth year in a row the Lottery has provided more than $1 billion in supplemental funding for education. Retailers won too, earning over $252 million in compensation last year selling Lottery products. Since its inception in 1985, the Lottery has contributed more than $18 billion to California schools.