Lottery gas prize

It seems gasoline is entering all aspects of our lives…and in the “sales gimmick” incentive area the promotional ideas keep “rolling” along. Here’s the latest-With gas prices making a beeline for the $5-a-gallon mark, the Florida Lottery has a solution for lucky drivers this summer: free gas for life.

Once a week for the next two months in a game called Summer Cash, the lottery will offer as second grand prize a card that will entitle the winner to gasoline for as long as they live. First prize: $250,000 in cash.

Summer Cash will run statewide through Aug. 26 with drawings on eight consecutive Wednesdays, starting July 9. Each drawing will offer up to five winners the lifetime supply of gas.

Fifty lower-prize winners each week could end up with a year’s supply of gasoline.

Tickets went on sale Monday. Juan Andres Perez, who says he spends $70 a week to gas up his Mitsubishi, was starting his week off with lunch at Caribe Cafeteria in Miami and dreaming about what could be.

”If I win the prize, I’ll come to this restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I will take a trip around the entire state of Florida,” said Perez, 52.

”People are very excited,” said Juan Jose Alvarado, Caribe Cafeteria owner.

At El Palmar Supermarket in Hialeah Gardens, proprietor Victor Peña reported brisk Summer Cash sales. ”It is being played by everyone from young adults to the elderly,” Peña said.

“Everyone is dreaming of winning!”

The prize will have a minimum value of $52,000, said Julio Rodriguez-Diaz, the lottery’s Miami-Dade sales manager.

Winners can opt to receive the minimum cash up front or choose 26 prepaid gas cards worth $100 each year for the rest of their lives. Winners of the one-year supply of gas will get 26 $100 cards, as well.

Cards will be accepted at BP, Chevron or Exxon Mobil stations.

Tickets will cost $5 and will be sold each week until midnight Tuesday. There is no limit on how many can be purchased.

”We are very enthusiastic about this game,” Rodriguez-Diaz said.

Summer Cash is one in a series of three-month seasonal games the lottery launched two years ago. Lottery officials estimated the game would bring in between $4.7 million and $5.8 million for education.

Dining at Caribe and fantasizing about pocketing a Summer Cash winning ticket, cabdriver Juan Castaño, 62, said he spends $350 a week on gas.

“If I win, it would be the happiest news of my life!”

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