$23 Million Isn’t Everything : Lottery Jackpot Won’t Sidetrack Northridge Woman From Dream of Becoming a Doctor

When and if Caroline Tio makes it to medical school, she’ll have one less thing to worry about amid brain-breaking exams and damnable hours--the mountain of debt awaiting most young physicians.

That was taken care of when the 22-year-old Northridge woman won $23.3 million in the California Lottery Wednesday--just two days after she had quit her job as a lab technician to study for the medical school entrance exams.

Monday was to be Tio’s first day of full-time studying, but instead she held a downtown news conference to tell a crush of reporters that she is grateful for the windfall, but it doesn’t really change her plans all that much.

“The money is great,” she said, giggling. “But it’s not going to deter me from my goals. . . . I still have my life in front of me.”

Another ticket with the same numbers was purchased at a Bell liquor store by 41-year-old Heredia Maria Rodriguez of Anaheim. The $46.56-million jackpot, the seventh-largest in the state lottery’s history, will be split between Tio and and Rodriguez, who claimed her prize Monday in Sacramento.

Rodriguez, a food packer, chose her winning numbers by using special family dates, such as birthdays and anniversaries, a spokesman for the lottery said. Her secret to winning, she told lottery officials, is to buy tickets in different cities and in different stores.

Rodriguez and her husband, Roberto, 45, told lottery officials they plan to start their own business.

Tio, a 1991 graduate of UC Berkeley’s architecture school and an infrequent lottery player, said she plans to take the Medical College Admissions Test this fall and join her older sister in studying medicine.

She wants to be a pediatrician or an obstetrician. “Something with kids,” she said.

Winning the lottery has not seduced her into abandoning that goal. “Just because you don’t have to work for the rest of your life doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you want to do,” she said. “Some people think doctors are in it just for the money.”

The money, which will be paid in 20 annual installments of $1,164,000--on which she will still owe federal income taxes of 28% to 31%--could not have come at a better time. “I was unemployed and didn’t know what I was going to do” while concentrating on studying, said Tio, who moved to California from her native Indonesia in 1979.

Other than that, she was reluctant to reveal many other details of her life.

On a lark, she went to the Alpha Beta supermarket on Rinaldi Street in Northridge about 45 minutes before last Wednesday’s drawing and bought $5 worth of tickets.

One set--2, 16, 26, 37, 42, 45--was a winner, but Tio didn’t realize she had won until the next day at lunch when one of her friends mentioned that a winning ticket had been bought in Northridge. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s me.’ So I pulled it out and it was.”

She took half a day off to claim her prize, but then worked a full day Friday--her last--”because it was a commitment.”

Tio as yet has no plans for the money aside from helping her older sister, Imelda, through USC Medical School. There have been no parties, no spending sprees. The dress she wore for her 15 minutes of fame was old.

“I haven’t had time to think about it,” she said, explaining that she has been too preoccupied with her upcoming exams.

And about that studying?

“I guess I’ll start tomorrow,” she said.