Edwin Castro, the California man who won a $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot in 2022, is using part of his winnings to help restore the community where his life changed forever.
Castro, 33, purchased the winning ticket at a gas station in Altadena, California. Now, he’s spending millions to buy properties and rebuild homes for families who lost everything in the devastating Eaton Fire earlier this year.
“This is for a family that wants to move in,” Castro told The Wall Street Journal about one of the properties he purchased. “Those are the people that need to be looked out for right now.”
The Eaton Fire, which burned in January 2025 alongside the Palisades Fire, left at least 31 people dead and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, according to the outlet. While some investors have been buying up the scorched land for redevelopment, Castro says his motivation is different—he wants to give back.
The surge in investor interest has unsettled longtime residents, who fear that large-scale development could erase the area’s history and affordability. A petition to block outside buyers from purchasing Altadena lots has already gathered nearly 1,500 signatures.
Altadena lost approximately 9,000 structures in the blaze. Castro, whose father worked in construction, says he plans to rebuild homes that reflect the neighborhood’s original craftsman-style architecture—and to sell them at reasonable prices. “The profit margin doesn’t need to be egregious,” he told WSJ. “But I’m not building these homes just to give them away.”
Castro, an architecture consultant and former Altadena resident, said he wants to preserve the town’s “whimsical” spirit and focus on selling homes to families who plan to stay, not investors looking to rent them out. “I want it to feel like the old neighborhood,” he said. “Like if you put all those houses pre-fire in a time bubble.”
He also recalled his father’s pride in working on major construction projects such as the Getty Museum in Malibu—an experience that shaped Castro’s own drive to build something lasting. “He’d be like, ‘I built that building. I worked on that,’” Castro remembered.
Amid the widespread devastation, Joe’s Service Center—the gas station where Castro purchased his winning ticket—was one of the few structures to survive the blaze, according to the New York Post.
