One of the winners of the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot has had cancer for eight years and wants to use the money to “find a good doctor.”
Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, father of two, of Portland, Oregonwas announced Monday as the winner of the enormous jackpot, the fourth largest in lottery history.
“I will be able to support my family and my health,” the 46-year-old said at a news conference.
“How will I have time to spend all this money? How long will I live?”
Photo: AP
Saephan, 46, entered the lottery with her friend Laiza Chao, 55, who contributed $100 (£80) for them to buy a batch of shared tickets.
After purchasing the tickets, Ms. Chao sent a photo of the tickets to Mr. Saephan and jokingly said, “We are billionaires.”
The next day they won.
Saephan broke the news to Chao while she was commuting to work, telling her over the phone, “You don’t have to go anymore.”
In the weeks leading up to the drawing, Saephan said he wrote the game numbers on a piece of paper and slept with it under his pillow.
Photo: AP
He prayed that he would win and said, “I need help; I don’t want to die yet unless I have done something for my family first.”
Mr. Saephan and his wife, Duanpen, 37, keep half of the money and the rest will go to Ms. Chao.
They are accepting a lump sum payment of $422m (£336m) after tax.
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Saephan, a machinist for an aerospace company, said he was born in Laos and moved to Thailand in 1987, before immigrating to the United States in 1994.
At the news conference he wore a sash identifying him as Iu Mien, a Southeast Asian ethnic group with roots in southern China.
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Many Iu Mein were subsistence farmers and helped American forces during the Vietnam War.
After the conflict, thousands of Iu Mien families fled to Thailand to avoid reprisals and eventually settled in the United States, with a large and active community in Portland.
The winning ticket was sold in early April at a Plaid Pantry store in Portland, ending a Powerball winless streak that had stretched for more than three months.
Photo: AP
The $1.3 billion (£1 billion) prize is the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot in history and the eighth-largest among US jackpot games, according to the Oregon Lottery.
The largest US lottery prize won was $2.04 billion (£1.69 billion) in California in 2022.