💻 From Under the El
Even though it’s still cold outside, the sun is shining — and warm weather is finally on the horizon, with a spring weekend in the forecast. Do you have plans to get outside? If not, now is the perfect time to make some; Saturday is looking like great patio weather. In the meantime, we have a couple more days of work, and a couple more days of good news.
⏰ tl;dr
An Illinois woman who almost didn’t buy a ticket is now a $536M lottery winner — a one in 290,472,336 chance paid off and changed her life
A first-of-its-kind transplant at Northwestern gave a mom a second chance and a new path forward for cancer treatments
A heated trivia night is turning competition into community support for LGBTQ+ healthcare
🌻 What’s Going Right In Chicago Today
💰 “It still feels unreal”: Illinois woman claims $536M Mega Millions jackpot
A last-minute decision turned into one of the largest online lottery wins in U.S. history.
The winner (who’s staying anonymous and going by “Lucky Lady”) almost didn’t play at all. She’d tried to buy a ticket the week before and forgot to check out, even joking to her boss that maybe it “wasn’t meant to go through.” A week later, she tried again, reshuffled her numbers a few times, and landed on a ticket that included her favorite number: 16.
That casual second attempt has turned into a $536 million jackpot, the second-largest online lottery prize ever won in the U.S.
I couldn't believe it. I was shaking and telling myself, 'This can't be real.’ I had my daughter call one of the claim centers to confirm, but it still feels unreal.
As for what’s next? A new family home (maybe one with a pool) and a big family trip. She’s thinking a cruise or a Vegas vacation.
🏥 A rare transplant at Northwestern just changed what’s possible for stage 4 cancer patients
A groundbreaking surgery in Chicago gave one patient a second chance, and could reshape how certain advanced cancers are treated.
39-year-old Amy Piccioli had no symptoms. No warning signs. Nothing that suggested anything was wrong, until she was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer.
After chemotherapy shrank her tumors and surgeons removed part of her colon, the biggest challenge remained: Cancer had spread throughout her liver. Traditional surgery wasn’t an option. Doctors at Northwestern Medicine made a call that’s still rare in the U.S. and decided to perform a living donor liver transplant. Her lifelong friend stepped in as the donor.
“I'm one of those people who's very diligent about my health and very cognizant about changes in my body. So for this to have happened without any signs or symptoms was just shocking to me.”
Three months later, Piccioli has no evidence of remaining cancer, making her the first patient at Northwestern to undergo this kind of procedure for this diagnosis.
🏠 Chicago moves closer to proactive apartment safety inspections
A new city effort could shift Chicago from complaint-based enforcement to a more proactive system that protects renters before something goes wrong.
For years, Chicago’s building safety system has mostly worked on a reactive model: A tenant calls 311, an inspector gets assigned, and the issue gets addressed — eventually. But that approach has left gaps, especially for renters who don’t know how to report issues or feel unsafe doing so.
Now, the city is taking a step toward something more proactive.
City Council just approved the creation of a “Healthy Homes” working group tasked with designing a system for regular apartment inspections and building a public registry of property ownership. The goal is to move toward a model used in cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where routine inspections help catch problems before they escalate.
Not everyone knows to call 311. Or, they know and they’re afraid to, because there are real risks of the landlord being called … there are legitimate fears of retaliation.
There are still questions (like funding, staffing, and logistics) and no immediate rollout. But instead of relying on tenants to raise their hands, the city is starting to explore what it would look like to go looking for problems first, which is how apartment inspections used to work before the program was scrapped in 2017 amid spotty enforcement. For a city with tens of thousands of rental units and many high-profile, dangerous violations making headlines and endangering renters’ lives, this is an important and much-needed step forward.
🗓️ Eye On the Chi
Heated Trivia Fundraiser
Show off your trivia skills (and “Heated Rivalry” knowledge") while helping raise money for Howard Brown Health.
When: March 23, 6 p.m.
Where: Crust Tap Room
Oxfam: Organizing & Building Power
A hands-on training to help turn concern about inequality into organized, collective action.
When: March 23, 10 a.m.
Where: Simmons Center for Global Chicago
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Till next time,
Good News, Chicago
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