The Cerezo family hasn’t been facing the best of times. Their house has been in foreclosure since February and they were months away from eviction. Their cars were repossessed. Their jewelry gone, sold to the highest bidder. Ricardo Cerezo, the 44-year-old head of household, quit his job in management consulting in 2010 to take care of his daughter, Savannah, who had to stay home with severe bipolar disorder. A professional in helping companies in distress, he painstakingly took her to and from medical appointments and trips to the hospital. But 14-year-old Savannah died last August. Brain-dead, her parents pulled her off life support after suffering four-and-a-half hours of seizures.

One of Savannah’s last gifts to her parents was a glass cookie jar. And one of her last requests, seeing their financial struggles, was urging them to never stop playing the lottery. “Savannah was the only one that encouraged us to play,” he told Fox News Latino. “Everyone at home thought it was a waste of time given that we needed every penny.” The father played when he could and saved old lottery tickets — they never won anything — in that glass cookie jar. This week, nine months after Savannah’s death, Ricardo and his wife, Bonnie, were doing some kitchen cleaning and she asked him to finally do something about three months’ worth of old tickets filling up the jar.

Do something with them, she asked him. So instead of throwing them out, he decided to actually check if one of the tickets had winning numbers. Ricardo took the 11 tickets stashed in the cookie jar to the 7-Eleven where he had bought them. The first eight out of the nine tickets came up empty. The next ticket was a winner — $3. But the last ticket, a Quick Pix, alerted Cerezo that he needed to file a claim, which means the ticket was worth $600 or more. As it turns out, it was worth nearly $5 million. It’ll be spread out in annual payments of $100,000 for 26 years and paid on each February, coincidentally Savannah’s birthday month. Continue Reading

Article Org: Latino.foxnews.com

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U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Ranking Member and Chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, today released the following new information about the February 2013 release of ICE detainees with criminal records.

In February 2013, in a misguided effort to comply with anticipated budget cuts due in part to sequestration, without explanation or warning, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials released from custody 2,226 detainees into communities across the country. In response to requests for information by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), after a three month delay and under threat of a possible subpoena, finally disclosed details about those releases. DHS disclosed that, as part of the larger release, it freed 622 detainees with criminal records, including 32 with multiple felony convictions. Continue Reading

Article Org: gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com