March 12, 2010 -- Emery Desrosiers of Winsted earns his living as a home hardware fabricator, making door handles and such at a Torrington based manufacturing plant. But a recent windfall $100,000 prize in the CT Lottery’s Cash5 drawing game has given him a chance to do something he's always wanted to do. That is, turn the doorknob on a house that's his.

Desrosiers and his wife, Brenda, have been together for 31 years, happy to live in the rural setting Winsted provides. They've been hopeful to someday buy a piece of property and home. “I think this could make a nice down payment for a house. I don't like cities and big buildings," Emery said, adding that, "I love it when I can see trees and the outdoors."

Though Desrosiers $100,000 winning ticket was drawn on February 25, neither he nor his wife could breakaway from their daily obligations to travel to the Lottery’s offices in Rocky Hill until today. “The people we work with asked ‘why are you here?’ when we said we’d won,” Desrosiers related to Lottery officials, noting that co-workers thought they should take time off from their jobs to claim their prize and celebrate the win. “We like our jobs, we like what we do, so we got here when we could,” he said.

On February 26, when Desrosiers matched the numbers on his Cash5 ticket to those being shown during a news broadcast, he told Brenda of their win. “Then, he gave me a kiss, said ‘see you tonight,’ and went to work,” she said. “Just like that. And so did I.”

Desrosiers had played a set of numbers for some time, but on Feb. 25, opted to let the computer randomly select numbers for him as a “Quick Pick.”

After accepting his check for $68,500 (the prize value after taxes) from Lottery officials, Brenda Desrosiers jokingly said the first thing they planned to do with the money was to “buy an umbrella” to ward off the expected rainy weather forecast for this weekend. She added that the couple will place their prize money into a bank account until they have made final plans for its investment.

The winning Cash5 numbers that were drawn on February 25, 2010 were 10 - 15 - 17 - 34 - 35. The top prize winning ticket was purchased at Winn’s Deli and Convenience Store, 3568 Winsted Road in Torrington. For selling a top prize ticket in Cash5, retailers in good-standing receive a $1,000 Selling Bonus from the CT Lottery.