Lao Immigrant Battling Cancer Wins $1.3 Billion Powerball (image-pixabay)The winner of this month’s $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot was announced on Monday. Cheng Saephan and his wife Duanpen Saephan were named as the winners of the huge amount. Cheng is an immigrant who has been battling cancer for the past eight years.
Cheng after winning the money, the 46-year-old said during the press conference that he and his 37-year-old wife are only taking half of the money and the rest will be given to their friend Laiza Chaos, 55 of the Portland suburb of Milwaukie. She has chipped in $100 to buy the tickets. The couple will take an amount of $422 million after taxes.
Saephan said that with the money he would look after his family and health, and will find a good doctor for himself.
The father of two young children said that being a cancer patient, uncertain about the number of days he could live, he said, “How am I going to have time to spend all of this money?”.
A day before winning the draw, Chao sent a photo of tickets to Saephan and said, “We are billionaires,” completely unaware that he would win the draw.
Laiz Chaos was on her way to work when Saephan called with the news. “You don’t have to go anymore,” he said.
Saephan wore a sash at the news conference identifying himself as Lu Mien, a Southeast Asian ethnic group with roots in southern China. He said in the press conference that he was born in Laos and then moved to Thailand in 1987. Saephan migrated to the US in 1994. Many Iu Mein were subsistence farmers and assisted American forces during the Vietnam War; after the conflict, thousands of Iu Mien families fled to Thailand to avoid retribution and eventually settled in the US.
Saephan graduated from high school in 1996 and has lived in Portland for 30 years. He worked as a machinist for an aerospace company.
Saephan said that he wrote the numbers for the game on a piece of paper hid it under the pillow and slept each day praying, “I need some help — I don’t want to die yet unless I have done something for my family first.”
The $1.3 billion prize is the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot in the history and the eighth-largest among US jackpot games.