SACRAMENTO – A European tourist found out that California truly is the “land of opportunity.” Olga Sabikova was here in California visiting family and friends and won nearly $200,000 after heeding the advice of her uncle and buying a Fantasy 5 ticket.
“I checked the numbers right after the draw and I knew I won but I didn’t know where or how to claim my prize,” explained Sabikova. “I spoke to a retailer and they told me where I had to go.” Sabikova is a driving instructor who currently lives in Ireland, but she will soon be moving back to her homeland of Slovakia to attend law school. “This prize will help me pay for law school, to get an apartment and a car in Slovakia and to buy my son whatever he puts on the list of things he’ll want once he finds out I won this money,” she joked.
Sabikova was traveling from the Concord area to Sacramento when she and her uncle stopped in to the ampm located at 4700 Madison Avenue in Sacramento two months ago. Her uncle suggested that she buy a ticket for the Fantasy 5 draw occurring that night when the jackpot was $196,965. She purchased two Quick Pick® tickets and one of those lines contained the winning numbers of 3, 22, 26, 32 and 33.
Fantasy 5 offers some of the best odds of any California Lottery game. A player wins the Fantasy 5 jackpot simply by matching five numbers out of a field of 39. The top prize starts at $50,000 and can top $500,000 depending on how many times the top prize rolls over (similar to SuperLOTTO Plus and MEGA Millions). Winning numbers are drawn every day. Tickets can be purchased from any of the more than 20,000 California Lottery retailers (www.calottery.com/locations).
More than 95 cents of every Lottery dollar is returned to the community in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retail commissions. The California Lottery contributes at least 34 cents of every dollar that players spend on Lottery products to public education and returns more than 50 percent of sales to players in the form of prizes. Since its inception in 1985, the Lottery has contributed more than $20 billion to California schools out of total sales of nearly $55 billion. Retailers benefit too, earning $3.5 billion in compensation since 1985.