Posted at 4 p.m., Monday, June 4, 2001

'Ewa man wins $1 million in Vegas

Alex Aris used his children's birthdates to select the ten winning numbers he used on a $1 keno card to win $1 million. Fremont Hotel photo

An 'Ewa Beach man won a rare $1 million keno game at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas late yesterday.

Alex Aris, a cook at Sky Chef and a father of four, used his children's birthdates to select the ten winning numbers he used on a $1 keno card. Casino officials said it was the third million-dollar Keno ticket in Nevada history, and would be paid as a lump sum by the casino and SCA Promotions of Dallas, Texas, a jackpot guarantee company.

Aris won his million on his first keno bet of the night, at about 8 p.m. Sunday Hawai'i time, when he bought five keno cards at $1 each. His third card was the winner. Odds were calculated by the casino as almost eight million to one.

"I'm ready to collapse," his wife, Rebecca, 50, said when contacted today at Waipahu High School where she is a teacher. She said she hoped her husband might now help her to open a hair-styling salon.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," son Onassis Aris said when he learned the news. Onassis, a University of Hawai'i student working at Kaiser Hospital, when asked what his father would do with teh money, said he had been wanting to add a fence to the four bedroom family home and maybe pour a slab for a new lanai.

He said his father was a hard working, thrifty man, "tight, but in a good way," and that his parents had moved seven times after arriving in Hawai'i before buying their home two years ago.

All but the youngest son, Jack, 14, were born in the Phillipines, and moved to Hawai'i in 1983.

Aris had to pick all ten winning numbers on a keno card in which he had 80 numbers to choose from. A total of 20 numbers were called.

"We're ecstatic," Fremont marketing director Howard Jochsberger said. "We love winners."

Aris was immediately upgraded to the tenth-floor penthouse Presidential Suite with two bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, a living room and a dining room, from the standard room he was occupying with his son, Aristotle, on a Boyd Gaming Vacations Hawaii-Las Vegas package.