With Luck He Got America, Too

A year ago Justo Ricardo Somarriba was just another illegal alien who entered the country by crossing the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Tex. Today he is an American success story. The Nicaraguan immigrant, who had been working for $3.50 an hour as a hardware store clerk, won $5.3 million when he picked all six numbers drawn in the Florida Lotto game. Still more good news: Immigration officials reversed themselves and approved his application for political asylum. “In Nicaragua he was a teacher in the government education department, and there is no question he resisted Sandinista propagandizing in the school system,” said INS District Director Perry Rivkind. Rivkind joked that he also had to consider Somarriba’s status as a wealthy man: “Now that he is a capitalist, I think the Marxists would like him even less.” Somarriba, 30, who lives in Miami with his wife, Maria Elena, and three children, immediately quit his job. He said he hoped to use the money to bring the rest of his family from Nicaragua and to open his own hardware store. Somarriba called his winnings, which will give the family a guaranteed $724.16 a day for the next 20 years, “a gift from God.”

--Ever wonder where the time went? Well, Michael Fortino of Fortino & Associates-Priority Management of Pittsburgh claims to have figured it out: The average American professional in a lifetime spends 7 years in the bathroom, 6 years eating, 5 years waiting in line, 4 being interrupted and 3 in wasteful meetings. Another year is spent looking for things, 8 months opening junk mail and 6 months sitting at red lights. According to Fortino, 85% of professionals work 45 hours a week--not counting time spent commuting and “networking”--65% work at least one weekend a month and 47% spend three or more hours a week doing work at home. Even so, he said, 82% of them have at least 36 hours of work on their desk at any one time. Fortino, who said he studied 1,000 professionals in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, will publish his head-splitting statistics in a book entitled “Time Flies When You’re Not Having Fun.”

--Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has received word that she passed the New York state Bar examination on her first attempt. The daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was graduated from Columbia University Law School last year. She still must be approved by the state Bar association’s character committee and, if all goes well, could be sworn in by the end of the year.