CLIVE, Iowa (KCAU) — A Strom Lake man won a big lottery prize and says it came at the perfect time.
Alexander Perez, 50, currently owns a garage in Storm Lake that maintains and repairs vehicles, but he plans to open a new business dealing in heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
“I started thinking about the dreams I had with my wife and family,” Perez said at Clive’s Lottery headquarters. “I may have slept a few hours last night because it was like a dream. So this morning I woke up and looked at the ticket two, three, four more times to make sure it was real. I believed that.”
Perez said Monday’s lottery win was sparked by a desire for coffee. He didn’t have any at home, so he stopped off in Midtown that morning, where he bought a ticket for the Extreme Green Progressive Instaplay before heading to work.
“I started drinking my coffee and forgot about the ticket,” Perez said. “I started looking at the ticket about five minutes later and I saw three numbers on the second line of numbers and I kept comparing them to the winning numbers. And I think I had a panic attack or something. I couldn’t breathe very well. I just called my wife and she tried to calm me down for a few minutes.”
Perez described the moment he realized he’d won as “a dream come true,” but said he was so distracted and excited that he decided to close up his garage for the day.
“I had to close up shop, I had to go home and start walking around my property because it was a really, really different day in my life,” he said. “It was a totally different situation. I was looking around not knowing what to do.”
Perez won the game’s jackpot, and the prize at the time was $295,300.
Perez said while accepting his prize money on Tuesday.
