- Lottery billionaire pledges to rebuild fire-ravaged Altadena community
- UCLA study reveals severe racial impact of Eaton Fire
- Local reactions mixed as Castro buys scorched neighborhood lots
Powerball’s $2 billion winner Edwin Castro has pledged to rebuild his hometown of Altadena in Los Angeles County, Calif., much of which was destroyed by wildfire in January.
The world’s richest lottery winner is one of the biggest buyers of scorched lots in the town, which are being purchased by investors from residents who have chosen to sell up rather than rebuild.
Castro bought his winning lottery ticket in 2022 for $10 from a gas station, Joe’s Service Center, on the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Woodbury Road in Altadena. The fire burned more than 100 homes in Fair Oaks Avenue but spared Joe’s, prompting The New York Times to describe it as “the luckiest gas station in America.”
Devastating Fire
Many others were not lucky. The Eaton fire broke out on the evening of January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains. Fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, it swept down into the foothill communities, hitting Altadena especially hard.
Some 48% of Black households and around 37% of non-Black households were destroyed, according to a UCLA study. That suggests that around 39% of all households were wiped out – devastating for a community of around 43K people.
In total, 31 people died in the numerous California wildfires of January 2025, at least two in Altadena.
I want it to feel like the old neighborhood,” Castro told The Wall Street Journal in his first words to the media since his gargantuan windfall. “Like if you put all those houses pre-fire in a time bubble.”
Castro is looking to build homes for families who want to settle in Altadena, rather than those wanting to rent them out. But he emphasized that he was also looking to make a few bucks from the venture.
“The profit margin doesn’t have to be egregious. But I’m not building these homes just to give them away,” he told WSJ, adding that they might take ten years to build.
Man of Mystery
Castro, who lost a $3 million Malibu mansion to the California fires, has largely been an enigma since his win, but he revealed some details about himself this week to WSJ.
He said he grew up in a middle-class family, and his father was in construction. He was a Boy Scout who spent his childhood going on fishing trips, fixing up old cards, and obsessing about Pokémon and Dungeons & Dragons.
He was renting his home when he won big and working as a private architecture consultant. He is single and wants kids “like yesterday.”
But not everyone is convinced by Castro’s pitch. One resident, whose house was damaged by smoke, complained to WSJ that he was “just another person trying to get some profit.”
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