One of the winners of a $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot this month, he’s an immigrant from Laos who has suffered from cancer for eight years and received his final chemotherapy treatment last week.
Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, 46, of Portland, said Monday at a news conference hosted by the Oregon Lottery that he and his 37-year-old wife, Duanpen, would split the prize equally with a friend. Laiza Chao, 55, of Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland, paid $100 to buy a batch of tickets with them. They agree to a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes.
“I will be able to support my family and my health,” he said, adding that he would “find a good doctor for myself.”
Saephan, who has two young children, said that as a cancer patient, he wondered, “How am I going to have time to spend all this money?” How long will I live?
After purchasing the shared tickets, Chao sent a photo of the tickets to Saephan and said, “We are billionaires. » It was a joke before the drawing, he said, but the next day it became reality.
Saephan said he was born in Laos and moved to Thailand in 1987, before immigrating to the United States in 1994. He wore a scarf at the news conference identifying himself as Iu Mien, an ethnic from Southeast Asia with roots in southern China. Many Iu Mein were subsistence farmers and aided American forces during the Vietnam War; after the conflict, thousands of Iu Mien families fled to Thailand to avoid reprisals and eventually settled in the United States.
Tens of thousands of Iu Mien live along the West Coast, with a large and active community in Portland.
Saephan graduated from high school in 1996 and has lived in Portland for 30 years. He worked as a machinist for an aerospace company.
In the weeks leading up to the drawing, he wrote the game’s numbers on a piece of paper and slept with it under his pillow, he said. He prayed to win, saying, “I need help – I don’t want to die again unless I do something for my family first.” »
The winning Powerball ticket was sold in early April at a Plaid Pantry convenience store in Portland, ending a winless streak that lasted more than three months. The Oregon Lottery said it had to go through a security and vetting process before announcing the identity of the person who came forward to claim the prize.
Under Oregon law, with few exceptions, lottery players cannot remain anonymous. Winners have one year to claim the top prize.
The jackpot had a cash value of $621 million before taxes if the winner chose to take a lump sum rather than a rent paid over 30 years, with immediate payment followed by 29 annuities. Prize is subject to federal and Oregon state taxes.
The $1.3 billion prize is the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot in history and the eighth-largest among U.S. jackpot games, according to the Oregon Lottery.
The largest US lottery jackpot won was $2.04 billion in California in 2022.
