Dreams come true, $45 million Lotto jackpot

Old interesting news:



A 43-year old Manhattan playwright who always dreamed of a life under the bright lights of the stage, was the star of the show yesterday as the sole winner of a $45 million Lotto jackpot.
Struggling performance artist John Falcon was all smiles and laughs as New York State Lottery officials presented him with a replica of a $45 million check


"Where's my money," he joked.


Falcon, a New York native who grew up in The Bronx, is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Falcon held the only winning ticket for the Oct. 30 drawing - earning him a place in Lotto history as only the second person ever to single-handedly grab a $45 million jackpot. 
He bought the winning ticket from Stop & Go News Inc. at Broadway and 92nd Street in Manhattan.
His winning strategy?
He simply played his old addresses - 3, 15, 20, 22, 32 and 39.
"I've been in shock for two weeks," Falcon said. "There is no reality to any of this yet."
Falson said after betting two dollars a week for two years without a win, he was stunned at his sudden good luck.
"I didn't know what to do," he said. "Do I go back to the bodega where I bought it and ask for my $45 million? Finally, I asked my boss and he said, 'Call the lottery office.'
"When I played the $33 million [jackpot] and didn't win, I looked up at heaven and said, 'Grandma, do something.' I think she did!"
Starting next week, Falcon will receive his winnings in the form of annuity payments over 20 years.
The Big Apple's newest millionaire says he's going to use his newfound wealth to bankroll what has been a struggling arts career.
"I'm definitely going to do my show, now I can afford to rent out theaters," said Falcon, who is the author of a one-man show entitled, "The Short Puerto-Rican Guy Sings Songs of Angst."
Falcon, a life-long subway rider, says he does have one other plan for the money.
"Maybe I'll learn how to drive."



News of NY Post written by ANGELA C. ALLEN

GUNMAN ONCE WANTED TO JOIN THE FORCE

The crazed Brooklyn gunman who wounded four cops before he was shot and killed had once dreamed of being a policeman, and was crushed when the NYPD turned him down, officials said yesterday.
"We believe that he made an attempt to become a police officer and was rejected ... some time ago," Mayor Giuliani said of 47-year-old Arthur Alalouf.
The gunman - who had a cache of rifles, shotguns, handguns, knives and swords in the Gravesend home where he lived with his parents - had worked as a peace officer for the Parks Department in the early 1980s, police said.
Then, from 1982 to 1984, he worked as a city correction officer - during which time he was twice investigated for allegations of excessive use of force.
Giuliani said the charges appeared to have been unsubstantiated - but details were sketchy, in part because his personnel records were lost when the building housing them on Hart Island collapsed.
"We're going to have to literally dig for the records," Giuliani said.
Alalouf's family told cops he had hoped to transfer from the Department of Correction to the NYPD - but was told he couldn't become a cop because he had asthma.
They told investigators Alalouf then had a nervous breakdown - and was apparently never the same.
Alalouf left his correction job in 1984, but at that point the details become sparse.
"The whole picture of his life for the last 16 years is a little hazy," Giuliani said.
Cops said he became reclusive and settled into his parent's Gravesend home.
Alalouf "[lived] off the family and, for the past 15 years, has been somewhat of a hermit," said Chief of Detectives William Allee.
Neighbors said that for years Alalouf was known as a mean-spirited loner who yelled at neighborhood kids and eventually erected a wooden fence that he painted red and topped with razor wire.
He kept dogs, including a pit bull, and secretly began amassing an arsenal of weapons.
The family told police that Alalouf was never hospitalized for mental illness, but had been treated for depression and was taking anti-depressive medication and sleeping pills.
They told cops he'd acted strangely for the last 15 years but in recent days had become even more belligerent, brooding and violent.
On Saturday he told his parents to buy propane and gasoline so he could blow up their house, adding that he intended to shoot and kill cops. That's when they finally went to police to get help - leading to their son's rampage.
Police said Alalouf lived in a foul-smelling, squalid basement room full of guns, ammunition and boxes bristling with samurai swords and hunting knives.
In an upstairs room, cops found the decaying bodies of a dog and cat stuffed into a suitcase.
Relatives told investigators these were pets he had intended to bury on property in Pennsylvania he used as a hunting camp - but he'd never gotten around to it. The animals appeared to have been dead at least a month.
Alalouf's parents returned to their three-story Parkway Court home yesterday afternoon - after driving around the neighborhood waiting in vain for reporters to leave.
"Get out of here!" shouted Alalouf's mother, Irene, when a reporter approached the family's white van.
When she finally entered the house with her husband, Sam, she snapped at a TV reporter who asked how she felt: "I lost a son. How do you think I feel?"
Neighbor Anna Saltalamacchia, 52, lives in an apartment whose back windows face the back of Alalouf's house.
"I could hear him sometimes, yelling and laughing," she said of Alalouf. "I don't know if he was alone or what, but it wasn't a regular laugh. It was kind of wild and evil."
She also said he would expose himself to her.
"I would be taking sun on the porch and he would be standing in the window naked. I stopped doing that because of him," she said.
Neighbor Heather Adelle, 22, said Alalouf used to yell at her when she played on the block as a youngster.
"There used to be lots of kids running around. He was obsessed with quietness," Adelle said.
"He would yell at us out the window to be quiet. He would say, ‘Shut up and go home.' If we didn't leave, he would get louder and louder.
"He was never friendly, never a hello or anything," she said.
Of the family, she added, "They were never social."


NY Post, Monday,August 14,2000

Growing Ideas Growing Fields

Now we are involved in the bad and difficult days of growing together as a new community. New world and new issues are becoming stronger and others are becoming less and less important. We have to rule the world growing ideas and growing our fields. We have the key that opens our heart and our mind to the world. It's no time to lay on the floor waiting to be trampled by the enraged mass.

It's time to wake up and take the horns of the furious bull!

Together, the honest, worker an peaceful people. We have the key, we are strong and together we are unstoppable!

Peace & Love.