With his big win, Suchy Klein is determined not to lose himself

When Suchy Klein of Flatbush stopped at a Chinese-owned grocery for a bottle of water, he wasn’t even planning on buying a lottery ticket. Although he’d won $5 scratch-offs before, he suddenly became the newest member of an exclusive club of overnight millionaires. But what now? Take the lifetime payout or grab the lump sum and hope you don’t mess it up?

Winning, he hopes, isn’t going to mean losing himself

“I Think We Won $10,000 a Week for Life.”

When the deluge hit his phone, he was sitting in Punta Cana. Suchy “Marc” Klein had just done what millions fantasize about while standing in line at 7-Eleven and yet almost no one ever actually pulls off. He scratched a lottery ticket and discovered he’d just become the newest member of a very small club with a very large payout: the winner of New York State’s “$10,000 a Week for Life” game.

But the way he tells it, his first reaction was one of anxiety more than ecstasy.

“Honestly, my first reaction was, I hope nobody finds out,” he says. “When they took my picture for the New York State Lottery, I was hoping they wouldn’t have to make it public. That they’d just put out some statement without my face on it.”

He’s 45, works multiple jobs, teaches in a special-needs boys’ school and helps run a community wedding hall in Flatbush. On the day his life changed, he was leaving one of those jobs and just wanted a drink.

“I stopped at this little store for a bottle of water,” he recalls. “I wasn’t even planning on buying a ticket. I usually go to a different place, but for a whole bunch of reasons I ended up half a block away, at this Chinese-owned 99-cent-type store I almost never go into.”

A detour that, in retrospect, belongs in the Hashgachah Pratis Hall of Fame.

On a whim, he told the cashier to give him a random scratch-off. The first ticket won him $20.

“I figured, okay, nice, nothing huge. So I told her, ‘Gimme another one.’”

Without really looking at the numbers he fed it to the lottery scanner, the little machine that either buzzes in disappointment or lights up your day. This time, it delivered an entirely new category of emotional experience, as it spat out two words he’d never seen before.

“It said BIG WINNER,” he says. “I thought it was a mistake. I put it back in again. Same thing: BIG WINNER.”