SAN BERNARDINO, calif. — For more than five months, Julie Cervera struggled to pay a $600 electrical bill, feed her family and keep the cable company from shutting off her service because she couldn’t pay.
Meanwhile, her $23 million lottery ticket languished forgotten in the glove compartment of her car.
On Thursday, someone texted her a photo of her daughter, Charliena Marquez, buying the winning ticket. The photo had been released by lottery officials searching for the winner of the May drawing.
“I put my 99-cent glasses on, and I had to put two pairs on to see it,” said Cervera, 69, of Victorville. She recognized her daughter in the photo, but she couldn’t read the caption.
“I thought she robbed a bank because I couldn’t see the words on top,” Cervera said, laughing. “So I put on a third pair (of glasses) and it said she won. I was like, ‘No way!’ “
In May, mother and daughter were driving home together when Marquez felt queasy and asked her mother to pull over so she could buy a bottle of water. Cervera asked her daughter to buy a lottery ticket.
“I put it in my new car. It’s an old car but it’s new to me. It’s been there for five months,” Cervera said Friday at a news conference. “I’ve got like 200 tickets laying around my house. I never check my tickets.”
