SOCAL RETIREE WINS BIG WITH SWEEPSTAKES HOBBY
Steve d’Adolf, 77, has won thousands of prizes, including 292 trips
Most Americans have likely entered a sweepstakes contest and most have also likely never won a prize.
But most Americans are not Steve d’Adolf, a Rancho Bernardo resident who is one of the nation’s most successful sweepstakes winners. The 77-year-old retired engineer has won thousands of sweepstakes prizes over the past 40 years, including 292 trips worldwide, tickets to four Super Bowls, a weeklong pastry class in Vienna, a ride on the Goodyear blimp and a meet-andgreet with Britney Spears.
D’Adolf said there’s only one secret to winning lots of prizes:
Putting in the time. He spends about seven hours a day, every day, entering between 300 and 400 sweepstakes contests, both online and by mail. In return, he wins an average of two to three prizes a week. Some are small, like a beer coozie or a year’s supply of microwave popcorn. But many are major, like a weeklong cruise of the British Virgin Islands aboard a $650,000 private yacht.
“When people ask about the time I put in, I use the analogy of a tennis player who goes to the club and plays once a month. You can have a good time, but you won’t beat the tennis pro,” d’Adolf said. “You can spend an hour a day entering sweepstakes and win some nice prizes, but over a long period of time you won’t win a lot of the big prizes. It’s a numbers game, no matter how you look at it. The more entries you have, the more chances you have to win.”
D’Adolf is the unofficial executive director of the National Sweepstakes Convention, an annual conference that last year drew 600 “sweepers” to San Diego. The next convention is slated for July 2021 in Scottsdale, Ariz. D’Adolf said sweepers come from all walks of life, including police officers, post office workers and military service members. Their average age is about 50, he said.
Like most of the older sweepers, d’Adolf got into the contest game through the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, which has awarded cash prizes since the late 1960s.
“I got a contest newsletter in 1980 and read the back sheet where people who had been entering sweepstakes published their wins. I thought, ‘my gosh, this is amazing.’ My friends told me there’s no way to win, so I thought, that’s my challenge.”
D’Adolf ’s career lent itself well to long stretches of downtime that he could fill entering sweepstakes. An electronics engineer, d’Adolf worked in the missile and commercial satellite industries, which took him to all 50 states and many countries overseas. During business f lights, layovers and solo stays at hotels, he had plenty of hours to organize and execute his contest-entry system.
With his wife, Pat, and their daughter, April Taylor, d’Adolf moved to Poway in 1982 and retired in 2003. Two years ago, the d’Adolfs sold their home and moved into the Casa de las Campanas retirement community in R.B. As a newcomer, d’Adolf was invited to talk about his career at a Casa residents get-toknow-you event, but it was his sweepstakes hobby that really enthralled the audience. Since then, a handful of residents have taken up sweeping with d’Adolf, who serves as the leader of their informal club.
Because d’Adolf focuses his time on entering travel sweepstakes, one prize that has always eluded him is a car. They’re not impossible to win, though. A car-loving sweeper who lives in Santee has won more than 20 cars over the years. That win streak has inspired d’Adolf to keep trying.
“I do it for the challenge,” he said. “The value of the prizes is great and I love it, but it’s the challenge of figuring out how to win when other people can’t. It drives me when others say ‘I can’t find a sweepstakes in my hometown.’ I keep looking until I find something. One thing I hear people say is they’re so burned out from entering that they want to take a break for a month. I tell them there’s one thing you can know for sure: You can’t win if you don’t enter.”