GreenTeaChloe
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A US man whose home had been foreclosed and was facing eviction just a year after his daughter suddenly passed away has found a lottery ticket worth millions in his cookie jar.
Ricardo Cerezo, a management consultant from Illinois, said his wife was cleaning out old lottery tickets from the family cookie jar and was planning to throw them away, the Chicago Tribune reports.
"It was either take them, get them checked, or she was going to trash them that night," Mr Cerezo said.
Mr Cerezo was desperate enough to hope that one of them could be a winner and took them to the local 7-Eleven to check them out.
The first eight or nine tickets were not winners, he said.
"The following one was $3, so I was excited. I get to pay for my Pepsi. And then the last one said file a claim," he said, which meant it was worth at least $600.
The next day Mr Cerezo went to the lottery office where officials pulled him aside and told him that his ticket was worth $4.85 million.
Three months earlier a judge at a foreclosure hearing had given Mr Cerezo and his family a few months to find a new home before they were evicted.
“That was on Feb 12, so we were sitting on $4 million at that time in this jar,” he said. "We will have our home paid off."
The Cerezo family had just endured a traumatic year with their 14-year-old daughter Savannah dying from a sudden illness last February.
"It (the lottery win) couldn’t have happened at a better time," Mr Cerezo said.
"I just thought, this is how God works."
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Ricardo Cerezo, a management consultant from Illinois, said his wife was cleaning out old lottery tickets from the family cookie jar and was planning to throw them away, the Chicago Tribune reports.
"It was either take them, get them checked, or she was going to trash them that night," Mr Cerezo said.
Mr Cerezo was desperate enough to hope that one of them could be a winner and took them to the local 7-Eleven to check them out.
The first eight or nine tickets were not winners, he said.
"The following one was $3, so I was excited. I get to pay for my Pepsi. And then the last one said file a claim," he said, which meant it was worth at least $600.
The next day Mr Cerezo went to the lottery office where officials pulled him aside and told him that his ticket was worth $4.85 million.
Three months earlier a judge at a foreclosure hearing had given Mr Cerezo and his family a few months to find a new home before they were evicted.
“That was on Feb 12, so we were sitting on $4 million at that time in this jar,” he said. "We will have our home paid off."
The Cerezo family had just endured a traumatic year with their 14-year-old daughter Savannah dying from a sudden illness last February.
"It (the lottery win) couldn’t have happened at a better time," Mr Cerezo said.
"I just thought, this is how God works."
