No Answers Yet on Lottery Outlets : Merchants Await Luck of Draw

Envisioning a bonanza of new customers, San Fernando Valley liquor store owners are growing antsy awaiting word on how to apply to become ticket outlets for the California lottery.

The merchants appear almost unanimous in their desire to dispense the tickets, saying new customers would flood their stores, lay down money on the lottery and spend their last dollars on Twinkies, potato chips and beer on their way out the door.

“Everybody wants to get rich, so why not us too?” asked David Adelpour, owner of Ringside Liquor in Studio City.

Many Queries

One North Hollywood liquor store owner, Guss Barakat of Hughie’s on Magnolia Boulevard, said more than 100 customers have telephoned or come into his store asking when tickets will be on sale and whether they will be available at Hughie’s.

“There are a lot of retired people in this area,” Barakat said. “What else do they have to do?”

But, as many of the merchants have found, most questions concerning the operation of the lottery remain unanswered.

A lottery director and a five-member state commission will govern the lottery and will decide, among other things, where tickets can be sold, how much they will cost and what percentage of the ticket price will be awarded to vendors as a commission. The six officials, however, have yet to be appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian.

Ralph Mbarkeh, who owns Rocket Liquor in Canoga Park, said he is so eager to sell the tickets that he telephoned the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control seeking information on how to apply.

“They don’t know when it’s going to be,” Mbarkeh said. “Everybody’s just waiting.”

As the weeks tick by without a board of overseers, it seems increasingly improbable that the lottery can meet the April start-up called for in Proposition 37, the November ballot measure that authorized the lottery.

Deukmejian spokesman Kevin Brett said Wednesday that getting the machinery in motion to sell tickets by spring “would be quite a task.”

Since the ballot measure was approved, Brett said, the governor’s office has been flooded with inquiries from merchants hoping to sell tickets, companies desiring to run the statewide operation and individuals wishing to work for the commission.

One letter came from the California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn., which has 2,000 members statewide.

“We would most certainly like our retailers to be ticket vendors, and we have written a letter to the governor asking for his consideration,” said Judy Ashley, a spokeswoman for the association.

Stores Interested

The association and others who have inquired have been told “to direct their communications to the commission when it is formed,” Brett said. “Those inquiries are premature at the present time.”

But the lottery is without a doubt a hot topic among Valley liquor merchants.

“I’m sure every liquor store is interested,” said Bernie Ribons, owner of Party Pantry Liquor in Van Nuys.

Ribons said liquor stores are a logical place for ticket sales because they stay open late and have experience screening minors. The law prohibits anyone under 18 from purchasing a lottery ticket.

A few store owners, however, want nothing to do with the games.

“We don’t want to get into that hassle,” said Lakhbir Singh Chima of the Liquor Mart on Nordhoff Street in Sepulveda. “If people don’t win, they’ll raise all kinds of hell with us, and who needs that. We have enough customers already.”

Also expressing disdain for the lottery was Ralph Kaufman, who runs a 7-Eleven Store on Woodman Avenue in Panorama City.

“I voted against it,” Kaufman said. “It’s too much work. I’d have to hire another clerk, and it wouldn’t pay his salary.”

Kaufman said, however, that the decision on whether to apply as a ticket vendor would be made by the Southland Corp., the parent company of 7-Eleven Stores. Kaufman also expressed concern that the lottery might attract organized crime and intensify the robbery problems that already plague convenience stores.

But Mbarkeh disputed that notion, saying he worked for several stores that sold lottery tickets when he lived in Michigan.

“There seemed to be no problem at all,” Mbarkeh said. “And those stores made a lot of money.”