Owner of CA store where winning $2B Powerball prize was sold

Owner of California store – where winning $2.04BN Powerball prize was sold – says he will SHARE his $1million with his children and 11 grandchildren… and is happy someone from ‘poor neighborhood’ won

• Joe Chahayed, the owner of Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, California, sold the $2.04billion Powerball ticket
• Chahayed won $1million for selling the ticket at his store and said he will share his winnings with his family, including his 11 grandchildren 
• He said he had a ‘feeling’ the winning ticket would come from his store and ‘excited’ that a potential member of the Altadena community has won 
• It’s a very poor neighborhood,’ he said. ‘From the bottom of my heart, I hoped somebody would win…they deserve it…The poor people deserve it’ 
• The winning ticket read: 10, 33, 41, 47, 56, and Powerball 10. The winner has not publicly come forward

The owner of Joe’s Service Center in California won $1million for selling the record-breaking $2.04billion Powerball ticket and he said he will share it with his family.

Joe Chahayed – the father-in-law of former NFL player Domata Peko – held up the huge check outside his gas station alongside his family and one of his managers on Tuesday as he wore a ‘millionaire made here’ shirt.

‘We are excited,’ he said at a press conference with California Lottery. ‘I’ll share it with family, with whatever is needed, with my kids, my grandchildren. I have 11 grandchildren and I’ll share with them.’

His son, who was at the press conference, said ‘no one else deserves it more than this man.’

‘He’s worked hard his whole life and he deserves every bit of it,’ his son, who was not named, said.

His son-in-law also wished him ‘congratulations’ on his social media, writing on Twitter: ‘Congratulations Baba Chahayed!!! Alexa play A Mili by @LilTunechi. Blessed.’

The winning ticket – 10, 33, 41, 47, 56, and Powerball 10 – was sold at the Altadena store and Chahayed believes it belongs to a local, although California’s first-ever lottery billionaire has not come forward to collect their winnings.

Chahayed said he had a ‘feeling that somebody might win the money’ and he is excited to see one of the residents of the ‘poor’ neighborhood win it big.

‘[It is a] very poor neighborhood…It’s a very poor neighborhood,’ he told Pasadena Star News. ‘From the bottom of my heart, I hoped somebody would win…they deserve it. The poor people deserve it.’ 

Joe Chahayed, the owner of Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, California, sold the $2.04billion Powerball ticket. Chahayed won $1million for selling the ticket at his store 

Chahayed happily held up his big $1million check outside his gas station on Woodbury Road alongside his family on Tuesday as he wore a ‘millionaire made here’ shirt

‘We are excited,’ he said at a press conference with California Lottery. He said he would share the money with his family, including his 11 grandchildren 

The lottery also raised $156million for California Public Schools. Chahayed revealed that the California Lottery met him at his store ‘before open’ to tell him the news.

‘They were here before I opened, they were waiting here for me,’ he said at the press conference. ‘They said: ‘Congratulations, you are the station and [had] the winner.’ 

The storeowner, who has run the store for 20 years, also encourages others to buy tickets from his station.   

‘We believe one day you’ll be winners too,’ he said. He also joked that he would lower gas prices. The Powerball jackpot was won by a single ticket-holder on Tuesday. 

The jackpot, the largest lottery prize ever, was scooped by a ticket bought in California – after more than three months of nobody winning the top prize.

News of the win came after Monday night’s draw was delayed and then a Powerball Twitter account wrongly announced that nobody had won.

The winner, whose identity remains unknown, can now decide whether to take the whole prize as a 30-year annuity or opt for an instant lump sum of around $997.6 million.

He wore a ‘millionaire made here’ shirt that matched signed on his building, where paper B’s were taped over the M’s as the new winner won

The ticket was sold at the Woodbury Road store (pictured) and the winner has not yet come forward. Chahayed believes it was a local who won and is happy to see a potential member of the poor neighborhood win it big. He also said he had a ‘feeling’ the winner would come from his store 

The drama of the delayed draw, followed by incorrect reports, including by AFP, that nobody had secured the jackpot, sent social media into overdrive – with an avalanche of Powerball memes shared online.

The claim that nobody had won the prize and published on an unofficial Powerball website and Twitter account. That was then widely circulated by a respected news wire, AFP, and covered by several news outlets.

It’s not yet clear how many tickets were sold for the latest draw – but an estimated 280million were sold for Saturday night’s draw, when the jackpot was $1.6billion.

By comparison, around 159million people voted in the 2020 presidential election – about 63 percent of voting-age US residents.

That means it’s likely millions more tickets were sold for Tuesday’s Powerball draw than there will be votes cast in the midterms.

Chahayed’s son (far right) said ‘no one else deserves it more than this man’ 

His son-in-law and former NFL player, Domata Peko, wished his ‘baba’ congratulations’ on his social media. ‘Alexa play A Mili by @LilTunechi. Blessed,’ he wrote on Twitter 

Monday night’s draw for the bumper prize was delayed after an unnamed state said it needed more time to process sales.

Officials carried out the draw on Tuesday morning and also said new calculations revealed the jackpot was around $100million more than the initial estimate of $1.9billion.

There was initial confusion over whether the delay was caused by a glitch or a technical problem, with the California Lottery announcing on Twitter it was down to ‘security protocols’ not being followed.

The Multi State Lottery Association later clarified that it was down to one state simply not getting through its sales quickly enough to submit them for the result.

The association said it was against its policy to say which lottery had the delay.

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