Word: porchia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Angeles suburb of Glendora, entrepreneur Keith Porchia cheerfully dons a hard hat to check on the progress of the 51-unit apartment complex he is developing. In Winter Springs, Fla., Sheelah Ryan, a retired real estate agent, meets with the board of the Ryan Foundation to map programs for what she calls "the new poor." Somewhere in southern Atlantic waters, Anthony Palermo, formerly of the U.S. Navy, cruises with his family aboard his own yacht, joyfully named Picked...
When state-run lotteries first became popular in the late 1970s, "instant millionaires" were the isolated stuff of media sensation. Now Porchia, Ryan and Palermo are part of something else entirely: an expanding niche of American society filled with overnight plutocrats. As lottomania has swept the nation, one result is an entirely new social stratum of millionaires, over 3,000 in all, and more are added each month. With some prizes soaring past nine digits (the largest: $118 million in California last April), a few recipients even approach being superrich. But America's pot-of-gold winners...
...luck of the draw can mean freedom to take a different kind of risk. "I'd been trying to build a hotel," says businessman Porchia, who owned several minimarkets. "But the banks weren't interested in financing it." Then he hit California's $10.7 million jackpot in 1987. "Suddenly, financing was available," he says wryly. At 55, he enrolled in Azusa Pacific University to earn a master's degree in business administration "to maximize my investments." His 75-room Comfort Suites Hotel opened three years ago and is being followed by his large apartment development. "Every goal you ever desired...
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