LOTTO FAITH: Christina Reggiero (left) and Tory Urbaniak nab Powerball tix yesterday in hard-hit Belle Harbor, Queens. (
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With Sandy raining so much destruction on New York, maybe it’s time for a little good luck to shine down.
Across the city’s storm-thrashed neighborhoods yesterday, residents flocked to buy tickets for today’s Powerball lottery, which has grown to a jackpot of $325 million.
The players weren’t just dreaming of riches — they hoped that the lottery’s manna from heaven would help wash away Sandy’s pain.
“If somebody here won, it would be awesome,” said Tory Urbaniak, 23, who bought $10 worth of tickets in Belle Harbor, Queens.
“They’d share it with everyone in this community, I’m sure. They definitely would give some type of donation,” added Urbaniak, who said the first thing she would do was replace her dad’s storm-flooded car.
“I’ve never played Powerball before, but I’m going to play because I think that something good has to happen to somebody around here,” said Doreen Nicosia-O’Connor, 45, in Far Rockaway, who lost her car in the hurricane and who bought $6 worth of tickets.
“I think someone in the Rockaways should win,” she said. “They’d give it back to this town, maybe not all of it, but a big chunk.
“And the more people in this neighborhood who buy, the bigger chances we have to win, and I know we’d all help each other.”
The Powerball jackpot is the third-largest in the game’s history and would pay the winner a $213 million lump sum before taxes.
Sam Castino, 39, a construction worker from Brooklyn, said his home flooded in the superstorm.
“Let’s just say I could use a few extra million,” he said. “Maybe not that much, but we gotta get all new siding, some new furniture, carpeting in some places.
“I mean, hey, who couldn’t use 300 million bucks?”
On Staten Island, John Ricafort, 49, who saw his home in Great Kills flooded and ruined, bought three tickets from a store in Ocean Breeze.
“If I win, I’ll definitely move away from the water,” he told The Post. “Maybe to California, but I don’t know about the earthquakes.”
At Belle Harbor Cards and More in the heart of the hard-hit Queens neighborhood, Christina Reggiero, 24, thought that a win by anyone in the area would be a win for all.
“If someone from this neighborhood won it would help out everybody. It would be nice for someone here to win because they’d give back,” said Reggiero who worked at the store and who also $10 worth of tickets.
“My house in Broad Channel lost the bottom floor. If I won, I would help my family rebuild it,” she said. “I’ve been out of work since this hurricane, I’ve been at home helping my family, we lost everything on the bottom floor.”
John Biscaino, 52, of Far Rockaway, said: “It would be poetic justice if someone in this neighborhood won. I’ve been here my whole life. The house I grew up in burnt to the ground. It’s hard to see this.
“How nice if a true Rockaway-ite won.”
Additional reporting by Joe Tacopina and Matt McNulty