Surprise Prize : News of Sweepstakes Win Delights Grandmother

Rose Zinn was truly surprised.

“What?” she asked Sunday. “You say I win the Irish Sweepstakes? Oh, this is good! I never win anything before.”

Zinn, a 70-year-old grandmother whose English is colored with the rich accent of her native Hungary, lives in Fullerton with her husband Eugene, 73, a retired commercial painter.

And the first she heard that she was second-place winner in the most recent Irish Sweepstakes was when a Times reporter called for her reaction Sunday afternoon.

Zinn won second prize of $24,500 for her ticket on the horse Bonalma in the running Saturday of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes Hurdle Race in Dublin.

Two other Americans, Brian Taylor of White Plains, N.Y., and Fred Harris of Sacramento, each won $122,500 for having tickets on the winning horse, Hansel Rag.

So technically, Rose Zinn did not “win the Irish Sweepstakes.” She came in second.

But who’s to quibble when the news is so good? Not Rose Zinn. Time and again, she left her phone call to tell her husband, “I won the Irish Sweepstakes! Can you imagine?”

Zinn said her winning ticket was only the second time in her life she had bought a sweepstakes chance. “I got it from a lady in my club,” said Zinn.

“Yes, I bought it from a lady in the Placentia Seniors Club two months ago. I wonder if she knows I won? I will call her.” She said she couldn’t remember how much she paid for her winning ticket. “Four dollars, I think. I can’t remember.”

Zinn had no idea how or when she would be officially notified. Perhaps, she mused, officials in Ireland had already called “and I wasn’t in the house.”

The $24,500, she said, could be put to good use. “I’ll pay off the (mortgage on the) house,” she announced. And, adding that the mortgage wouldn’t require all of the $24,500, she said the remainder of the money “will help my children and grandchildren.”

Zinn said she has two sons, ages 44 and 47, and four grandchildren.

Asked if she might keep just a little money to spend for herself, Zinn paused, then said she might. “I don’t know what I’ll buy,” she said. “I don’t want jewelry.”

Zinn said she emigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1936 because some of her relatives had previously moved to this country. She met her husband, who is also a native of Hungary, after she came to America. She said her husband retired with a medical disability after an accident in 1968.

In between happy gasps of saying, as if to reassure herself, “I win the Irish Sweepstakes!” Rose Zinn had another message to tell the world:

“I love the United States,” she said. “It’s been so good to me.”