Did You Save Your Hard-Earned Money Or, More Importantly, Listen To Your Mother?
Of course not. But at least he bought her a ring. In other words, here is the day’s most irresponsible piece of journalism:
Posted: June 12th, 2008 | Filed under: Follow The Money, Just HorribleA 44-year-old Manhattan doorman whose mother told him he was throwing his money away on lottery tickets won $5 million from a scratchoff card.
“Look, Ma, I’m on top of the world!” Richard [Sonny] Randazzo shouted to his stunned mother, Chora, Wednesday as news photographers snapped his photo and he accepted his jackpot.
The bachelor, who lives with his parents in Gravesend, Brooklyn, admitted he’s been buying up to $30 worth of lottery tickets weekly for the past 25 years with little to show until now.
On May 2, his luck changed when he bought a roast beef sandwich and his winning “Set for Life” scratch ticket at the Mill Basin Mini Mart.
“What a very strange trip it’s been,” Randazzo said at Wednesday’s news conference at Gargiulo’s restaurant in Coney Island.
Randazzo said he had “itchy palms” when he purchased his ticket, a telltale sign of luck. He said he chose to play “Set for Life” because he “zoned in on” the orange and red tickets.
When he saw he had won, he quickly called his parents, who were vacationing in Florida.
“We’re rich!” he shouted.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Randazzo’s father, Frank, a retired machinist, said of his son beating the nearly 1 in 4 million odds.
“I asked Richie, ‘You sure you read it right?'”
Chora Randazzo, a retired hairdresser, admitted she often scolded her son about playing the lottery: “I told him he was throwing his money in the garbage.”
The Tiffany diamond ring he bought her has changed her mind.