The retirement of a September 11th first responder just got a whole lot better. He won $5 million playing the lottery. Michael Scotto filed the following report.

Longtime lottery player Carmelo Mercado was playing a new scratch-off game for the first time when he noticed more zeros than he was expecting to see.

"I went down three rows. It looked like $5,000, but it was another comma. And then I saw the other threes, and I went like, 'How does this game work again?' I put the top number, the bottom number, I said, 'Holy mackerel, that looks like $5 million,'" Mercado said. "My mind went blank. I was in shock."

It was a welcome gift for the 63-year-old retired New York City firefighter.

As a member of Engine 316 in East Elmhurst, Queens, he responded to the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. He said he spent nearly two straight days there. The toxic air left him with health problems that eventually made it difficult to work.

"The lung doctor at the fire department told me, you know, he was going to push me out. He says, 'Listen, your breathing's not good. You lost a lot of oxygen levels in your lungs,'" Mercado said. "I knew the time came three years later, 2004."

Mercado said he started playing the lottery when he was in the FDNY because it was something all the other firefighters did. So when he showed up at a Queens store on May 12 to purchase a couple of tickets, he wasn't expecting much. But he bought and scratched off his ticket.

Mercado wasn't the only one cheering. The owners of the tiny smoke shop that sold him that ticket celebrated, too.

After taxes, Mercado banks a lump sum payment of $3.3 million. That's on top of his $91,000-a-year pension.

Mercado said he plans on buying 10 American Girl dolls for his young daughter and a Florida house for himself and his family.

Word of his newfound wealth has already spread to his old fire buddies.

"I said, 'Joe, everything is beautiful now,'" Mercado said.