An Arlington man has plans to buy a house after winning $500,000 in the Virginia Lottery.
“I’m so happy — I nearly cried,” Jose Marquina told lottery officials. “It’s my day today!”
Marquina beat 1 in 612,000 odds to take home the top prize in the Cash Fever lotto game, according to a Nov. 4 press release. He bought the winning ticket at a gas station at 6318 Leesburg Pike in Falls Church, near the Eden Center.
When Marquina saw that the ticket he was scratching looked like a winner, he said he couldn’t even finish scratching it.
“I couldn’t keep playing anymore,” he said. “I gave the ticket to my wife and asked her to finish scratching the ticket for me.”
The press release doesn’t elaborate on where Marquina hopes to live now. In an informal ARLnow poll earlier this year, buying a local house was readers’ top choice for what they would do if they won the lottery, while buying a vacation house was the No. 4 most popular pick.
Arlington Public Schools received about $6.3 million in funds from the Virginia Lottery in Fiscal Year 2024.
