Five time lotto winner gives from the heart to St Vincent’s cardiac services
WHEN Bondi Beach’s Carlo Massetti won first division lotto for the fifth time he decided the best way to give his heartfelt thanks to the universe was to donate to St Vincent Hospital’s cardiac services.
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WHEN Bondi Beach’s Carlo Massetti won first division lotto for the fifth time he decided the best way to give his heartfelt thanks to the universe was to donate to St Vincent Hospital’s cardiac services.
Mr Massetti, 44, had his most recent streak of luck last month when, twice in the same week, he bought winning tickets at Bondi Sixway News on Hall St totalling $2.5 million in prizes.
The wins come on the back of three other first division prizes since 2012 for the lucky former funeral industry employee who hasn’t worked since hitting his first jackpot.
While the recently divorced Mr Massetti wouldn’t divulge his secrets, he did confirm he played the systems entries.
These tickets cost anywhere from a couple of hundred to many thousands of dollars but greatly increase the odds of winning.
“I’m not a gambler in other ways. I don’t do the horses or the pokies,” Mr Massetti says.
“Whether I choose to go back to work part time later on is another thing but for now I’m focused on giving back.
“I’d encourage other lotto winners to do the same.”
Mr Massetti says he chose to donate to a cardiac related service as coronary heart disease runs on his father’s side of the family.
Both his father and two grandparents have had multiple heart attacks and so he knows first hand how important it is for the area to be adequately resourced.
Today he donated $50,000 for a cutting edge Organ Care System which lets transplant specialists perform tests to determine if a heart is truly healthy.
The single use system also allows for a much wider range of donors including those who have died when their heart stops beating meaning it’s no longer only those small group of patients on life support who can donate.
St Vincent’s heart and lung stream director, Professor Michael Feneley, says Mr Massetti’s generous donation will literally save someone’s life.
At the moment the technology is not funded by the government but without it those on the transplant list face a much longer wait for a brain dead donor as opposed to a personal who has died a more conventional death.
“St Vincent’s Hospital was the first place in the world to perform a successful heart donation after a circulatory death,” Prof Feneley says.
“That’s what we do at St Vincent’s. We are the first with these new breakthroughs and we need private donors to help fund them.
“Then once they become the standard of care eventually we hope the government steps in.”
Mr Massetti will now turn his attention to fulfilling that long held dream of many a Sydneysider — purchasing a home in the eastern suburbs.
“I can’t wait to move in and live a quiet life, a modest life,” Mr Massetti says.
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