Dream of School Alive for Big Lottery Winner

A $2-million windfall won’t change Geraldine Lafferty’s plans to return to school to study electronic assembly, a goal she has nurtured while working at a series of minimum-wage jobs for the past 18 years.

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time, and I’m going to do it,” San Diego County’s first lottery millionaire said Tuesday. “I’ve got my foot in that door, and I’m going to go through that door.”

The Spring Valley woman said she intends to use the first of 20 $80,000 after-tax payments to repay debts to her mother, catch up on bills and restore phone service that was disconnected a year ago when she fell behind on the payments. The rest, she said, is going in the bank.

Her first priority is her debt to her mother. “She has helped me when I have been in a pinch,” Lafferty said. “That’s what I asked the Lord--I said, ‘Please let met get up and spin so I can pay my mother.’ ”

Lafferty, the wife of a Navy molder stationed aboard the destroyer tender Cape Cod and mother of three children, won a trip to the Big Spin Monday with a $100 prize ticket she bought Nov. 8. She won $2 million on a night when lottery officials gave out a record $11.5 million.

She is a service station attendant and cashier at the Miramar Naval Air Station. Her $4.22-an-hour wage is the most she has earned in the last 18 years. But, Lafferty said, she has always had a dream to do better.

After five months in night school working for a high school equivalency certificate and a spot in electronics school, Lafferty told her boss several days before Christmas that she would be quitting Jan. 2 to return to school full time. Lafferty had started electronic assembly school eighteen years ago but dropped out when she became ill.

Her skills will be handy because her husband, Kent, will retire from the Navy within two years and may not be able to find a job immediately, Lafferty said.