YOUR SPACE: 'Mr. Lotto' is lucky with jackpot, luck in life

Randy Erickson is a career maintenance man who walks five miles to work and lives in a rented trailer.

He's also won the Colorado Lottery's Cash 5 jackpot of $20,000 twice in the past three years.

Add to that a string of not-so-shabby second prizes: "Forty-eight times I hit four numbers for $200," says the curly-haired 50-year-old.

The probability of winning the top Cash 5 prize is 1-in-201,376.

No wonder he's known as "Mr. Lotto" or "Randy Trump" by some co-workers at the Fort Carson PX.

He's lucky, all right - lucky to be alive.

If things had turned out as planned, he'd be a PX shopper, not a worker. At age 18, the night before he was to leave Wisconsin for Fort Carson to enter the Army, he was a passenger in a head-on car crash that split open his skull, smashed his leg and stopped his heart.

"I was in a coma for three days. When I woke up the first call you'd think would be from my parents. It was my recruiting officer. He said, ‘Can't use you now.' Here I am, laying in traction. I said, ‘Oh, well.'"

Recovery took three years, and he still has scars. He looks at it this way: "I'm grateful I'm alive and can think and walk."

Walk he does.

"I walk five miles to get here every day. I get my shoes rotated and balanced every 500 miles. A policeman stopped me the other day. I said, ‘What's the matter, officer, was I speeding? Or did I forget to turn on a blinker?' He said it's kind of strange seeing someone walking out here at 5:30 in the morning."

He often spends $30 a day on quick pick tickets. "I don't do it if I don't have extra money. I know how to budget my money. My bills come first. I'm not going to pawn something off just to play."

So far, it's paid off.

"I'm about $30,000 ahead," he says. "The lottery people asked me what I think made me won and I said, ‘Consistency.' Because I play every night."

After his most recent $20,000 jackpot on May 5 of this year, it took him 10 days to get to the Pueblo lottery office to claim his after-tax check for $14,200. He had to get a ride. He doesn't drive.

He resists temptations and banks the big checks. "I watch ‘Wheel of Fortune' and see all the trips people take, but I want a house."

A double-wide trailer, to be exact. "After I put the second one in CDs my landlord offered me a place for $18,000. I said, ‘But I already put it in CDs. How about if you just wait until I win it again, because I know I will.'"

His confidence stems from experience. "I've always been lucky. I was the oldest of 14 kids and my dad played the football pool and he said, ‘Randy, pick me some numbers,' and he started winning."

He's lucky in love, as well, he says, talking of life with his common-law wife, Iris.

"When I met her I didn't have any money, I just had a job. I told her, ‘Iris, look, we found each other and I don't make a lot of money to support both of us.' After I met her I started winning."

He prefers the odds on Cash 5 but also buys Lotto and Powerball tickets.

What would he do if he won millions? "I'll come to work in a limousine," he says.

But not before he spent a chunk. "The first thing I'd do is give a lot to charity. The homeless and the needy that need food, I'd make sure they get some of that."


Tell me your stories: 636-0253 or andrea.brown@gazette.com