Valley Stream woman hits mega jackpot

It was a happy Hanukkah indeed for Valley Stream’s Yuliya Lankri.

A New York Lottery scratch-off ticket from her husband as a Hanukkah gift turned out to be a big winner, and Lankri will receive $1 million a year for the rest of her life.

After taxes, Lankri still receives a very generous $661,800 a year, not a bad return on a $30 ticket. The prize came on a Win $1,000,000 a Year for Life scratch-off ticket. “I didn’t believe it,” she said. “I just put the put the ticket away. My husband looked at it too, and said it’s impossible.”

They decided to head to the New York Lottery’s customer service center in Garden City, where a woman at the counter confirmed the mega prize that Lankri had won. “She said, ‘It is real baby. This is real.’”

A month after scratching off the ticket, Lankri was back at the service center to accept her big check from New York Lottery news personality Gretchen Dizer. Lankri was joined by numerous other recent lottery jackpot winners, including a couple from Massapequa and five co-workers from a Wantagh professional office.

With the biggest jackpot of the group, Lankri was the star of the show. “That is the richest lottery scratch-off prize that there is,” Dizer said of Lankri’s guaranteed $20 million over the next 20 years.

The 37-year-old mother of three said she has not yet decided what to do with the money. Besides putting aside money for her children, ages 16, 14 and 4, Lankri said maybe she will plan a trip with her husband, Gabriel. They would like to go to Paris.

“Maybe one day we’ll get a new house,” Lankri said. But that’s down the road, as she said she enjoys living in Valley Stream. “Love it,” she said. “In the beginning, I hated it. It was too quiet.”

Lankri moved to the United States from Russia with her family in 1991 and met her husband shortly after. They have been married for 19 years and first settled in Brooklyn before moving to Valley Stream to raise their children.

Now that the family will be coming into some money, her oldest daughter would like a Mercedes. Her young son wants some new toys. And the 14-year-old daughter is indifferent to the winnings, Lankri said, and doesn’t want their new found fortune to change their way of life.

Lankri said she and her husband have occasionally purchased lottery tickets over the years, and probably will continue to do so, even with a six-figure check arriving each year.

If she has one regret, it was not holding on to the lucky penny she used to scratch the ticket with. Lankri said after her husband brought home the ticket on the second night of Hanukkah, she found a stray coin in a drawer and scratched it off right away. “From the excitement, I did not keep the penny,” she said.

While the money will be nice, Lankri said, most important to her is that her family remains healthy and happy. With $1 million a year guaranteed for life, she’ll certainly be looking to stay in good health.

The winning ticket was purchased on Dec. 21 at Dmars Minimart on Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village.