Plumber wins over P7M lotto jackpot

MANILA — He has worked for nearly 25 years as a plumber and now he is set to pass the baton—the pipe wrench rather—to younger plumbers as he opens his own service shop with the more than P7-million prize he won in the lottery.

This 56-year-old father of four from Baguio City is the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s (PCSO) newest multimillionaire. He was the sole player to correctly guess the winning number combination 14-35-37-09-21-17 in the Feb. 6 draw of the Lotto 6/42.

The winner took home exactly P7,088,836. He is the sixth lotto player who won and claimed his prize this year. For privacy and security purposes, the PCSO does not identify its winners.

PCSO Vice Chair and General Manager Jose Ferdinand Rojas II said that the winner got the winning numbers from his birth date and randomly picked digits. He added that the winner has been playing the lottery over the last two decades and only bought two tickets when he hit the jackpot prize.

When he claimed his prize at the PCSO’s head office in Mandaluyong City on Friday, the winner told Rojas that he would he would use his prize to buy his family a house and lot, and save a portion of his winnings for his children’s future. He added that he would also retire from his 25-year plumbing job so he could focus on the plumbing service center he and his wife would put up.

Rojas said that the PCSO was glad that another lotto player’s life has been changed by one of the PCSO’s games. Currently, the PCSO has five games to which players can win at least P6 million every night.

They are the Lotto 6/42 (P6 million), Mega Lotto 6/45 (P9 million), Super Lotto 6/49 (P16 million), Grand Lotto 6/55 (P30 million) and the newest Ultra Lotto 6/58 (P50 million).  SFM