SACRAMENTO - A group of 32 Lottery players today claimed their $1 million Grand Prize after their numbers were selected in the Million Dollar Raffle’s Grand Prize drawing on Saturday, March 17, 2007! The group’s winning seven digit Raffle number was 0600481, which was one of nine $1 Million Grand Prizes selected by the California Lottery on St. Patrick’s Day.
The leader of the winning group, Salvador Flores checked his numbers on the California Lottery’s website Sunday night and immediately told his wife who at the time was jogging on their treadmill. "She almost fell off the treadmill when I told her I had won. She double-checked the numbers and was shocked to find out that the last Raffle number was the winning one," said Flores.
Flores said that when he went to purchase the Raffle numbers, he initially was only going to buy 10 numbers, but changed his mind at the last minute and decided to buy 15 Raffle numbers. Amazingly, the 15th number turned out to be worth $1 million.
"I couldn’t believe that I almost didn’t buy more numbers," said Flores. "Our 15th number was the winner!" Flores purchased his Million Dollar Raffle ticket at Valencia Liquor in San Bernardino.
Flores called his fellow Raffle group members on Sunday night and left copies of the Raffle tickets in their inboxes at work on Monday morning. The group works at Southern California Gas Company in San Bernardino and have been playing the Lottery together since 2005.
The Million Dollar Raffle offered Lottery players the best odds of winning a million bucks ever offered by a California Lottery game. Nine Grand Prize winning Raffle numbers worth $1 million cash each were drawn on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. Four preliminary draws were held leading up to the Grand Prize drawing and 40 Raffle numbers worth $10,000 each were selected. Click here for a full list of the Grand Prize winning Raffle numbers and where they were sold. To search to see if your Raffle number was a winner, visit our winning numbers page.
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.