Persistent Play Pays Off : Pacoima Resident Beats Odds, Hits $2.4-Million Lotto Jackpot

For Isabel Curiel, winning money from the California Lottery is nothing new: She says her practice of buying about $100 in tickets every week has made her a winner more than 100 times.

But it has never given her a jackpot like the one she hit over the weekend.

Curiel, of Pacoima, hit the Lotto 6/49 jackpot for $2,408,691 with six numbers that a “quick pick” machine generated at random when she bought the ticket.

“I was very happy,” Curiel said through her son-in-law, Daniel Rodriguez, when the lottery’s Sylmar office confirmed Monday that her ticket was indeed a winner. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.”

Curiel first became excited Saturday when she realized she had matched five numbers. When the sixth chosen matched that on her ticket, she shouted to her daughter: “Olga! Olga! I got all six!”

Another ticket--with the winning numbers of 26, 37, 25, 22, 43 and 40--was bought in the Santa Barbara County town of Orcutt, a lottery spokeswoman said. But the purchaser has not yet claimed that $2.4-million prize.

After about 20% of the winnings are deducted for taxes, Curiel will receive about $96,000 annually for 20 years. Her first check will arrive in about two weeks.

Curiel said she would use the money this year to pay off some loans, buy her daughter, Ruby Esparza, a new house next door and build her eight grandchildren “the swimming pool of their dreams.”

Curiel’s husband, Ramon, said the family owns several commercial properties in Pacoima and has operated Elegancia Van Conversions for 14 years.

“Whatever’s hers is mine, and whatever’s mine is hers,” Ramon Curiel said. “We had a lot of luck, but we’re still going to be working.”

And his wife said she would keep playing the lottery, which she said brought her $5,000 two years ago, $100 on 80 occasions and “a lot of $50s, $5s and $10s.”

The winning ticket came from the Osborne Liquor Store in Arleta, which bears a special significance.

The Curiels’ son, who died in a 1974 accident, frequented the store. Isabel Curiel believes his memory brought good luck.