New York Lottery: Student wins NY Lotto
She's only 20, but a Queens college student can afford to throw herself one heck of a graduation party after hitting a $5 million lottery jackpot from a ticket she got from her dad.
Baruch College senior Beenish Tariq and her family now are looking to trade their Flushing apartment for a big house on Long Island - with a Lexus and a sports car in the garage.
But not before they pay those tuition bills.
"I had a mixture of feelings: shock, surprise, ecstasy," Tariq said yesterday at an announcement of her winnings at Manhattan's Carnegie Deli.
The finance major, who will graduate in May, has plenty of capital to pursue her dreams of getting an M.B.A. at Columbia University and becoming an investment banker.
And her 17-year-old sister, Nadia, can aim for expensive colleges such as Columbia and NYU, where she wants to work toward a career in corporate law or accounting.
"It has meant a stress-free future," said their dad, M.T. Qureshi, 48, a salesman.
The winning ticket came from Chucking Deli on 45th Ave., where Qureshi, a Pakistani immigrant, bought three $5 Million Instant Spectacular scratchoff tickets over Christmas.
The family waited months to collect the jackpot to give itself time to figure out how to handle the new wealth.
"We couldn't avoid it any longer," Nadia, a senior at Cardozo High School, said with a laugh.
Although it hasn't lined up professional advice, the family plans to save for a rainy day. "We're going to invest, that's for sure," Tariq said. "I am a finance major."
Meanwhile, Manhattan building superintendent Antonio Fonseca, 64, plans to retire and "winter in Portugal" after he and his daughter won a $28million Lotto jackpot.
Fonseca and daughter Ana Christine Melhor scored on Sept. 4 after years of spending $10 a week on Lotto. The father-daughter team plan to take the $14 million lump-sum payout.