UCSD Student Wins Super Lotto

July 17, 2008
SAN DIEGO, Calif.
Danielle Parker

UCSD graduate student Flannery O’Connor won the California Super Lotto July 11th. She was awarded a lump sum of $75 million with $50,000 in taxes.

O’Connor was given the lucky ticket by her gambling brother in a 7-Eleven in Del Mar. “I’ve bought maybe one other ticket in my lifetime,” said O’Connor. The winning combination was 03-07-17-25-57. Three and seven are her favorite numbers, she explained, and 17 and 15 are her parents’ birth dates. Fifty-seven is her mother’s age.

Four days after buying the ticket, O’Connor was watching television in her house when the news announced the winning numbers. “I must have checked the ticket about 25 times,” said O’Connor, “I think I screamed.”

With the money, O’Connor plans to return to her former home in Bloomington, Ind. to start a rock and roll summer camp for girls. O’Connor said that when she was little, she always thought of rock and roll as a “boys‘ club,” and now she wants to open that club to girls too. O’Connor is an avid musician and has been in four or five different bands. When asked about the kind of role she would take at this camp, she said, “I’d be the director, which is kinda scary, but exciting.”

She plans to move back to Indiana in a year so she can finish her courses at UCSD, she said. O’Connor said she expects an outpouring of support in Bloomington, which she described as an artistic town.

When asked if she has ever expected this, O’Connor replied with a smile, “It’s a fluke.”

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