Working Mother Gets Her Wish for Lottery Jackpot

Three days before hitting the $18-million state lottery jackpot, Hilarietta Ramirez was like a lot of others: an exhausted working parent dreaming of a break.

“I was picking up the kids at school, and I felt really tired,” recalled Ramirez, who has worked nights for the last decade as an intensive care unit nurse at Olive View Medical Center in Granada Hills. “I was just saying, ‘I wish I could win the lottery.’ ”

Her dream became reality Wednesday as state lottery officials in Van Nuys confirmed that Ramirez, of Granada Hills, had matched all six Super Lotto numbers in Saturday’s drawing.

She opted for an immediate $9.4 million instead of the 26 annual payments that would have brought her the full amount, which means she gets about $5.4 million after the Internal Revenue Service takes its cut for federal income taxes.

Ramirez, a mother of two, said she and her husband, Mars, a civil engineer with the city of Los Angeles, can’t fathom their windfall and have not given a lot of thought about how to spend it.

But after returning from a celebratory dinner Wednesday, Ramirez said they were thinking of sharing some of their largess with their Roman Catholic parish, donating some to help the homeless and helping out family members in need.

“I’m still in shock,” Ramirez said. “I just can’t believe it. I was just thinking, how is this happening to me?”

How it happened appeared to be that combination of fate, luck and in the Ramirezes’ case, a slight change in routine.

While traveling to Las Vegas for her sister’s wedding last Saturday, the couple stopped at Hani’s Chevron station on Palmdale Road in Victorville instead of another gas station they usually go to.

Ramirez decided to buy five Quick Picks and not her regular combination of numbers. But the couple did not discover that they had won right away.

Ramirez finally glanced at a newspaper Tuesday, thinking at first she had only four of the six numbers, then realizing on a second look that she had hit the jackpot.

Her husband returned home, she said, finding her shaken.

“He looked at me and said I was pale and ‘what is wrong with you,’ ” she said. “When I told him I won the lottery, he didn’t believe me. Then he checked the Internet.”

Ramirez said she called in sick Wednesday, telling her boss that she had a migraine headache. Beyond that, she said she wasn’t sure if she would quit her job.

Hani’s Chevron will get $90,000.