Alcario Castellano, the retired San Jose grocery clerk who turned his then-record $141 million lottery jackpot into a vehicle for philanthropy, died Saturday at age 90, surrounded by family members at his home in Saratoga.
In recent days, many friends and family had come to visit him at the house, knowing the end was near, his son, Armando Castellano, said
“I think it meant a lot to him,” his son said. “He really rallied in his last days saying goodbye to those folks. It was beautiful.”
Al Castellano would say that he and his wife, Carmen, already had a very good life raising their three children at a home in San Jose’s Cambrian Park. But that life changed forever when he woke up one Sunday morning in June 2001 and realized he held the only winning ticket to the California Lottery jackpot.
That life-altering day, he had just brewed a pot of coffee and then followed his usual routine of checking the winning numbers in the newspaper. He checked each number against the ticket he’d bought the day before at Union Liquors in San Jose. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He walked outside and checked the numbers again when he got back. It was real.
He waited about two hours before he surprised his wife with the news. They danced hysterically. As Castellano jumped up and down and talking about trips to Bermuda, he noticed his wife sitting down taking notes.
“I thought she was taking notes about what I was saying,” he said in a 2023 interview. “But she was writing down names. She said, ‘Oh, Al, just think of all the people we can help in Silicon Valley.’ ”
That’s when the Castellano Family Foundation was born, becoming a prominent philanthropic force over the next two decades — providing more than $7.5 million in grants to a nonprofit organizations large and small that focused on arts and culture, education and leadership, including Somos Mayfair, the Jose Valdés Math Institute, Opera Cultura, MACLA and San Jose Jazz. It also vaulted the Castellanos to the forefront of a conversation nationwide about the inequities in funding for nonprofits run by and serving people of color.
Carmen Castellano led the charge as the foundation pushed Silicon Valley nonprofits to diversify their boards and to make sure it paid attention to Santa Clara County’s large Latino population. Al Castellano said he was always very proud of what the foundation became as a result of her work and that of their children, who ascended into leadership roles in 2012 as their parents stepped back.
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“Our nonprofits are doing tremendous work without equitable funding, with minimal resources,” said their daughter, Carmela Castellano-Garcia, who was president of the foundation when it ended operations in 2023 and transferred its holdings into an endowment fund with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. “We were really able to elevate this issue locally and within philanthropy at the broad level.”
Al Castellano was born in New Mexico in 1936 and moved with his family to Hollister as farmworkers. He worked nights at a grocery store throughout high school and served in the U.S. Army in the 1950s. When he was discharged, he found a job with an aerospace company in Hollister and later worked in Palo Alto and Santa Cruz.
Not knowing anyone in Santa Cruz, Castellano said he decided to call Carmen Ramirez and ask her out. They had previously met at a wedding. He was the best man and she attended as a friend of the bride. They danced the night away and he drove her home to Watsonville.
“We were married about eight months later,” Al Castellano recalled. “I think her parents were happy they didn’t have to do a big wedding. We took care of it ourselves.”
The couple decided to move to San Jose, with Carmen pushing for a four-bedroom house in an area with good schools for her future children. As Al Castellano recalled, San Jose was in the midst of a housing boom in the mid-1960s, but nobody seemed eager to sell a house to a Mexican-American couple.
“It was hard for people of color to buy a home,” he said. “They wouldn’t even talk to us.”
Eventually, they found a four-bedroom home near Union and Camden avenues in San Jose’s then-new Cambrian Park neighborhood, where they lived for 40 years and raised their three children, Armando Castellano, Maria West and Carmela Castellano-Garcia.
“There was only one other Latino there,” Castellano said. “But it was a great place to raise kids. We had a good life there.”
Carmen and Al Castellano were married for 57 years before her death in 2020 at age 81. Education was important to the Castellanos, and all three of their children graduated from college and embarked on successful careers. The arts were also an important part of the family’s life: Their two daughters each danced with Los Lupeños de San Jose, whose board their mother served on. Armando plays the French horn with Quinteto Latino, an ensemble that celebrated its 20th anniversary this month at the Saratoga home his parents bought after the lottery win.
While Al worked at Safeway and Carmen had a long career as an executive secretary at San Jose City College, the couple became invested in their community. Both were involved with the American G.I. Forum in San Jose, and Al would often videotape the organization’s events, including the annual Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day celebrations. Those videotapes, along with other digital videos, photographs and papers, are now part of the Castellano Family Collection held by the San Jose State University Library and the San Jose Public Library at the MLK Jr. Main Library downtown.
“He was always very generous, especially with the Latino community, and this was before they hit the lottery,” said Fernando Zazueta, a retired San Jose attorney who was also active with the American G.I. Forum at the time. “They were both very active, and they always made sure their feelings were made known. They did change the landscape for a lot of nonprofit organizations.”
Al Castellano considered himself lucky for winning the lottery jackpot, but he often said becoming millionaires didn’t change the values held by himself, his wife or his children.
“I just think of it as the way we lived,” he said. “We had those opportunities and we just did it.”
Castellano is survived by his three children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Plans for a memorial event are pending.