One of the winners of a $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot last month is an immigrant from Laos who has had cancer for eight years and had his latest chemotherapy treatment last week.

Cheng “Charlie” Saephan, 46, of Portland, told a news conference held by the Oregon Lottery on Monday that he and his 37-year-old wife, Duanpen, would split the prize evenly with a friend. Laiza Chao, 55, of the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, had chipped in $100 to buy a batch of tickets with them. They are taking a lump sum payment, $422 million after taxes.

“I will be able to provide for my family and my health,” he said, adding that he’d “find a good doctor for myself.”

Saephan, who has two young children, said that as a cancer patient, he wondered, “How am I going to have time to spend all of this money? How long will I live?”

After they bought the shared tickets, Chao sent a photo of the tickets to Saephan and said, “We’re billionaires.” It was a joke before the actual drawing, he said, but the next day it came true.

Saephan said he was born in Laos and moved to Thailand in 1987, before immigrating to the U.S. in 1994. He wore a sash at the news conference identifying himself as Iu Mien, a southeast Asian ethnic group with roots in southern China. Many Iu Mein were subsistence farmers and assisted American forces during the Vietnam war; after the conflict, thousands of Iu Mien families fled to Thailand to avoid retribution and eventually settled in the U.S., especially along the West Coast.

Saephan graduated from high school in 1996 and has lived in Portland for 30 years. He worked as a machinist for an aerospace company.

In the weeks leading up to the drawing, he wrote out numbers for the game on a piece of paper and slept with it under his pillow, he said. He prayed that he would win, saying, “I need some help — I don’t want to die yet unless I have done something for my family first.”

The winning Powerball ticket was sold in early April at a Plaid Pantry convenience store in Portland, ending a winless streak that had stretched more than three months. The Oregon Lottery said it had to go through a security and vetting process before announcing the identity of the person who came forward to claim the prize.

Under Oregon law, with few exceptions, lottery players cannot remain anonymous. Winners have a year to claim the top prize.

The jackpot had a cash value of $621 million before taxes if the winner chose to take a lump sum rather than an annuity paid over 30 years, with an immediate payout followed by 29 annual installments. The prize is subject to federal taxes and state taxes in Oregon.

The $1.3 billion prize is the fourth largest Powerball jackpot in history, and the eighth largest among U.S. jackpot games, according to the Oregon Lottery.

The biggest U.S. lottery jackpot won was $2.04 billion in California in 2022.

Spring ball is over, but spring roster movement is far from it. And less than a day after Arizona wrapped up those offseason practices it has added a player for the fall.

Former Oregon offensive lineman Michael Wooten committed to the UA on Sunday, adding depth to a position group that got a little thin toward the end of spring due to injuries.

he 6-foot-4, 310-pound Wooten will have at least three years of eligibility with Arizona after spending two seasons. He appeared in three games for Oregon in 2022, mostly on special teams, but did not see action last year due to injury.

Wooten was a 3-star prospect out of California in the 2022 recruiting class, picking the Ducks over Colorado. He also had offers from ASU, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah and Virginia.

Ranked as the 49th-best offensive tackle in his class, Wooten provides another option on the edge behind projected starters Raymond Pulido and Jonah Savaiinaea and backups Rhino Tapa’atoutai and Alexander Doost. The UA lost tackle Joe Borjon to the NCAA transfer portal earlier this month.

Wooten is Arizona’s fifth spring portal pickup, the first on the offensive line.