Man Loses His Wife to Cancer and Wins Lottery on Same Day

It was a day Dennis Pinto will never forget.

At 3 a.m., his wife, Theresa, 31, died of ovarian cancer. At 7:30 p.m., he learned he had won the $3 million Super Lotto jackpot.

Pinto, 32, who had played the same lottery numbers twice a week for eight years, felt only numb and exhausted when the clerks at Rancho Market in Costa Mesa last week announced he was finally a big winner.

“I didn’t really say a whole lot,” he said. “I just looked at them and said, ‘I hope you’re not joking around.’ ”

Since that fateful day--the day before Thanksgiving--Pinto has been a jumble of emotions. He has buried his wife, taken a few calls from friends and returned to his job as a technician for McDonnell-Douglas in Long Beach, where he plans to continue working.

“Emotionally, it’s a roller-coaster ride,” he said.

The Pintos met in 1989 and were married in 1993. Over the past year, Dennis adopted Theresa’s son, Blake. The 7-year-old has been staying with his aunt but Pinto said he plans to soon bring Blake home to their two-bedroom apartment in Costa Mesa.

“There’s me and two cats over here,” said Pinto, who loved riding motorcycles and going trout fishing with his wife. “I find myself kind of hanging out here with not a whole lot to do.”

For now, his memories keep him company. He talks of the way his wife loved to live life “in the fast lane,” riding her own Harley Davidson and always attracting new friends.

The first clue that she was sick came last March when a lower back pain shot into her left leg, Pinto said. Since then she had undergone treatment at Irvine Medical Center, where she died Nov. 27 with her husband at her side.

Because he stayed overnight at the hospital, Pinto said he had been toting with him a small shopping bag that contained his toiletries, and the lottery ticket.

After his wife died, Pinto collected her belongings and then went to talk with Blake. That evening, he stopped by the Rancho Market on Newport Boulevard, as he has every Saturday and Wednesday for about five years.

As the teller put Pinto’s ticket into the computer to see if he had won anything, the teller said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the ticket . . , “ recalled Pinto, who at that point had not slept for 30 hours. “Another teller came over,” and his fortune was confirmed.

When they asked why he wasn’t excited, Pinto explained about his wife.

“He was quite broken up about it,” said Katherine Chew, who co-owns the store with her ex-husband, Robert. They will receive $15,000 for selling the winning ticket, a lottery spokeswoman said.

Pinto will receive the money in $108,000 increments annually, after taxes, for the next 20 years. His goal is to make sound investments and “keep it rolling.”

“I think early retirement would be nice, to do it comfortably,” he said. “It sounds like a lot of money now per year, but down the road, who knows?”

The insurance company will pay the “astronomical” medical bills incurred during his wife’s illness, Pinto said. Still, things have been tight financially because his wife had been sick and unable to work. Recently, Pinto sold both his and his wife’s motorcycles to help meet expenses.

For the moment, he will stay in his apartment. Maybe next year, Pinto said, he will move.

“I’m just kind of falling back into the routine,” he said. “I’ve kind of gone out and had a few beers with some friends, but it’s not like I’ve really been celebrating yet.”

Of course, if his wife were still alive, things would be different.

“I’m sure she’d be all excited,” he said.