Advanced Reading Exercise
Couple Win Lottery
Read the text and look at the questions that follow it. In this reading comprehension, the questions are true or false. Write true or false in the box provided.
A nagging wife paid off big-time for a New Jersey man, who won $100,000 a year for life in the lottery thanks to his insistent spouse. Jeweler Rasen Patel was dead-set against going to work in Manhattan on March 5 because of bad weather. But his wife, Hina, insisted he go - and he picked up a New York State Lottery instant ticket on his way in. A few scratches of a coin later, and Rasen Patel was screaming with joy.
Forecasters had predicted a big blizzard for that day, but the snowfall was light. And that prompted Hina Patel, an accountant, to push her husband to make his usual commute from their home in Edison into the city. "I wasn't going to go," he laughed, as he and his wife picked up their first $100,000 check at a New York Lottery office on Long Island. "I made him go because he was supposed to collect money owed to him," she said.
Rasen Patel bought a "Set for Life" instant lottery ticket in Penn Station on a whim and ended up never making it to work that day. Holding his winning ticket, he phoned home and told his wife, "I'm a rich guy!"
"I said, 'What are you talking about?' I didn't believe him until he got home and showed me," Hina Patel said. "I am still in shock and can't believe we won. We can now pay for our children's colleges, and we also plan to help people who aren't as fortunate." The couple has two kids, ages 15 and 10.
They'll keep collecting as long as they live - and the lottery will pay up to $2 million to their estate in the case of their early deaths. Two other lottery winners also accepted their prizes at the same press conference.
Victoria Ragone of Port Jefferson claimed a check for $4.5 million - her take-home pay, before taxes, of a $9 million Lotto win. "I still can't believe it - I never win anything," beamed Ragone, a single medical-billing worker.
She said she wasn't going to go wild with her new fortune at first, but then changed her mind. "I am going to do something crazy but I don't know what it is . . . maybe a little nip and tuck later," she laughed.
