EJ MONTINI

Montini: How I know the biggest lottery winners ever

EJ Montini
opinion columnist
Do you hold the winning ticket? Or have you already won?

A young couple with whom I am acquainted just won the biggest lottery prize ever.

The odds of it happening were even more astronomical than you or I winning Saturday’s Powerball jackpot, which at an estimated $675 million is said to be the largest lottery prize in U.S. history.

It’s not true.

This couple that I know cashed in on a much more valuable sweepstakes, one in which the likelihood of a payoff of this magnitude is the kind of long shot that no one but a dreamer – a real dreamer – would bet on.

I guess that’s what they are.

I tried to calculate the percentages of the couple’s big win but the math was too much for me.

It goes back years.

First, imagine a guy from an immigrant family in a Western Pennsylvania steel town whose grandparents were lucky enough to find their way to the United States. Then to find jobs in the factory, overcoming a lack money, the lack of an education, the lack of any understanding of the new country’s language,

Then managing somehow to raise six healthy children who went on to find work, make homes for themselves and raise families of their own.

What were the chances of that happening?

Then imagine this same guy was lucky enough to get a job in that same steel mill, which earned him enough money to help his parents pay for his college education, and then lucky enough to land an internship at a local newspaper.

And then, while there, he was fortunate enough to meet an amazing young reporter, the best writer on the staff, who just so happened to sit near him.

And what was the probability she would laugh at his jokes?

And what were the odds this same young woman just so happened rent an apartment within walking distance of the young man’s parents’ house? And agreed to go on long walks with him on streets paved with bricks and through neighborhoods defined by the size and shapes of their small churches and the smells coming from the kitchens of their small houses.

And then, by some very long odds, they got married.

And they had two amazing kids, including a girl who grew into a smart, funny, beautiful young woman, who went to college in Arizona, moved to New York, and then to California, and who met this witty, wickedly-smart Naval aviator, who also happened to be perceptive and wise enough to marry her. And then this couple -- with whom I am acquainted -- hits the jackpot.

His name is Charlie.

His winning ticket reads 8 pounds, ten ounces, 20.5 inches.

I’m guessing you’re acquainted with a lottery winner like that in your family. Perhaps you also have struck it rich. Maybe more than once. If so you know that, comparatively speaking, a $500 million, $675 million or even $1 billion lottery prize is...

…chump change.