PORTLAND, Ore. — One of the winners of the record-breaking $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot is an immigrant from Laos and has been battling cancer for the last eight years.
46-year-old Cheng "Charlie" Saephan and his wife, Duanpen, along with their friend Laiza Chao, were announced as the winners at an Oregon Lottery news conference Monday afternoon. The Saephans plan to split the prize in half with Chao, with Cheng Saephan splitting the remaining half with his wife. They're taking a lump sum payment, $422 million after taxes.
“I have been blessed with this prize," Saephan said. "I will be able to provide for my family and my health.”
He added he'd "find a good doctor for myself."
Saephan came to the U.S. in 1994. A year later, he graduated from high school and worked at a facility that manufactures airplane components. He continued working there up until 2016, when he got his cancer diagnosis. His latest chemotherapy treatment was last week.
“So, I’ve been thinking how am I going to have time to spend all this money," he said. "How long am I going to live?”
Saephan said he didn't begin playing the lottery up until four or five months ago, when he started to get a feeling that maybe he could get lucky.
“I had a feeling that I could win it … but I didn’t think that I was going to win this big,” he said.
Before buying the Powerball ticket, Saephan said he wrote out each number between one and 69 on a piece of paper and slept with it for two weeks in hopes the winning number would come to him.
He and Chao bought 20 tickets together, and Saephan got an additional 40 to 60 tickets for himself.
On the morning of the drawing, Saephan said he woke up to a phone call from his sister saying, "Hey brother, somebody won the lottery in Portland, Oregon. Is it you? Check your ticket.”
He went to his kitchen table, wrote the winning numbers on a piece of paper and spread all the tickets out in front of him. Saephan first went through all the ones he bought for himself. None of those were winners.
Then, he pulled over the stack of tickets that he and Chao bought together and started to check each one. About seven to eight tickets in, Saephan said he was thinking, “Oh my god, somebody else won — not me.”
But, he continued to look at the rest. “One more, two more, and then on the third one ... ” He said each number lined up — all the way to end. At that moment, Saephan said he took a deep breath and looked at his mom across the table and told her, “Mom, we’re rich."
He then texted his sister. “Yeah, it’s me.”
His sister replied, “You’re lying."
While on the phone with her to explain that he'd actually won, Saephan had his mom read the numbers out loud and said midway through she started to cry.
Saephan then called Chao to tell her the news.
“She’s like, ‘I’m driving, I’m on the way to work,'" he said. "I told her, ‘You don’t have to go to work now. We won the lottery. We won the jackpot.'"
She also replied, "Are you lying?"
Nope, Saephan was never lying. With his share of the winnings, he plans to buy his dream home in Oregon and find a great cancer doctor.