Brooklyn teen is the youngest winner ever of 'Win $1,000 a Week for Life' lottery game
TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Robert Salo, 18, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, won the “Win $1,000 A Week for Life” scratch-off game from the New York Lottery. He plans to go to college with the money. Salo posed for a photo Tuesday with lottery spokeswoman Gretchen Dizer.
A senior at Horndog High got lucky — for the rest of his life.
Robert Salo, who is just 18, got the graduation gift that keeps on giving when he
won the “Win $1,000 a Week for Life” scratch off game.
That means Salo, who came forward Tuesday, could collect more than $3 million before taxes if he lives to be 80 — the average life expectancy in the city.
“This is the first thing I’ve ever won,” said a grinning Salo, who is graduating this month from James Madison High School, a school infamous for its trysting teachers. “It’s a good way to start out life.”
Is it ever.
It’s also a big reversal of fortune for his single mom, who was wondering how to make her son’s college dreams come true: “We were kind of worried about paying for college,” Salo’s mom, Rabia, said. “I said if I had to work two jobs I would do it, but he’s going to the school he wants.”
Now neither son nor mother have to worry about that. But first, Salo’s getting some wheels.
“I’m definitely going to use it for college,” said Salo, who plans to go “out of state” but wouldn’t say where. “I’m going to invest in myself.”
Then, joking, he added, “Hopefully a nice car — something in my price range.”
Salo — who lives in Sheepshead Bay with his mom, a sibling and an uncle — was on the way to collect another set of wheels when he struck it rich May 15.
The family’s 2001 Volkswagen Jetta had been stolen and they were heading to the pound to pick it up, he said.
Salo said when they stopped at the BP station at the corner of Avenue T and Coney Island Avenue for gas, he bought a ticket.
“When I scratched it, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought it was a fake ticket. I had to ask them to pull over — I couldn’t drive and show them at the same time.”
Salo said the whole experience of winning so much money was surreal.
“It felt like I was in a dream,” he said. “Even after a couple of days it felt like a dream. I couldn’t sleep. I was just walking around at home. I wasn’t hungry or anything.”
Rabia Salo admits she’s biased, but she believes fortune couldn’t have smiled on a better young man.
“I’m excited for him,” the happy mom said. “He deserves it. He’s a good kid.”
Word of Salo’s good luck electrified James Madison High, which up till now was best known as the school where two female teachers were once found naked cavorting in a classroom — and where earlier this month a tattoed English teacher was accused of seducing a student.
Salo’s classmate Charles Coleman laughingly said he was a bit miffed his buddy was holding out on him.
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” said Coleman, 17. “This is the first time I’m hearing about it. I need to call him up for a loan.”
Kidding aside, Coleman said “it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Another senior, Anthony Drew, 17, said a grand a week in New York City isn’t all that much, “but better to win when you’re 18 than when you’re 95.”
Salo appears to be the youngest person to win the Lottery’s grand a week for life contest. In May, 21-year-old Pedro Pablo Martinez Jr. won the prize.
With Matthew Lysiak
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