Jose Herrera instantly won $1,000,000 when he scratched a $250,000,000 Cash Spectacular instant ticket.
Herrera, who is from Woodridge, has been a regular Illinois Lottery player for three years. His daily ritual, he said, is to stop and pick up an instant ticket to scratch as soon as he gets home.
“He came out of his room with the ticket. He was so pale, and said, ‘I don’t know if I should cry.’ At first, I thought someone had passed away,” Herrera’s wife said. “Then he said, ‘No, we won a million!’ But he said it in Spanish, and I misunderstood. I thought he said a thousand. But then he repeated himself, and I realized it was a million.”
The lucky couple plans to use the money to purchase a house.
Herrera purchased his winning $250,000,000 Cash Spectacular ticket at Convenient Food Mart, 8290 S. Janes Ave., in Woodridge. The retailer received a bonus of $10,000, or one percent of the prize amount, for selling the winning ticket.
$250,000,000 Cash Spectacular is a $10 instant ticket that features 30 top prizes of $1,000,000, three of which have not been claimed. For more information, please visit illinoislottery.com.
About the Illinois Lottery:
Founded in 1974, the Illinois Lottery has contributed over $20 billion (since 1985) to the state’s Common School Fund to assist K-12 public schools, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars to the Capital Projects Fund and to special causes like Illinois Veterans services, the fight against breast cancer, MS research, Special Olympics, assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS and police memorials. In addition to playing in-store, the Illinois Lottery offers online and mobile play for all draw-based Illinois Lottery games at illinoislottery.com. Players must be at least 18 years old.
