Some Plan to Buy in a Big Way as Lottery Opens Today

Igor Von Wurttenburg is ready.

Sometime this afternoon, the La Jolla fine arts broker will pick up 100 California Lottery tickets from a friend’s real estate office in Point Loma, pull a coin from his pocket and start scratching his way, he hopes, to $2 million.

“I’m not a gambler, per se,” Von Wurttenburg said. He nonetheless has decided to purchase $100 worth of tickets each week for six months.

“It offers hope to obtain something that is unobtainable,” Von Wurttenburg said.

Few San Diegans are expected to be bitten quite so hard by the lottery bug. But if state estimates prove true, 85% of residents 18 or older will play the instant winner game that kicks off at 12:30 p.m. today after ceremonies in San Diego and three other cities.

“This lottery is big,” said Bill Seaton, the lottery’s public relations director, who knows big events from his days as Sea World’s publicity man. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the penguins.”

Tickets will be sold at 1,500 outlets in San Diego County, from a gas station in Fallbrook to a grocery store in Tecate. Convenience stores, dry cleaners, liquor stores, ice cream parlors--almost every kind of retail business imaginable--will have the $1 tickets for sale.

For some ticket outlets, however, distribution problems made the final hours before the opening bell frantic.

Phone lines were jammed Wednesday afternoon at the lottery’s San Diego district office, and the small anteroom of the office was filled with retailers who had not received promised deliveries of tickets.

Molly English, district sales manager, had said Monday that one-third of the county’s outlets had not received tickets, either because initial delivery attempts had gone awry or because there had been delays processing their orders. After conversations with state officials, who insisted there were only spotty delivery delays, English backed off her estimate, attributing it to mistaken information.

Early Wednesday, Jerry Bentley, the lottery’s manager of ticket distribution, said 1,500 to 2,000 orders still were awaiting delivery statewide. But those tickets would reach outlets by kickoff time, Bentley said.

“It’s gone really smoothly,” he insisted.

Luanne Hill, manager of the Aztec Bowl in North Park, saw things differently as she stood in line at the lottery office on Aero Drive. Lottery salesmen had never called to take her order, and she was waiting for a malfunctioning computer to revive so she could get clearance to obtain 4,000 tickets.

“They never called and they never delivered,” she said.

Five of the 40 Circle K convenience stores in San Diego County had not received tickets by late afternoon Wednesday, according to Bill Bryant, a zone manager for the company. At least six of the 150 7-Eleven stores in the county also were without tickets, said spokesman Don Cowan.

English said Wednesday that the only retailers that should have been without tickets in San Diego County were those who had delayed filing their contracts with the state or establishing the special bank accounts required by the lottery.

Customer service phone lines at Purolator Courier Corp., which is under contract with the lottery to deliver tickets to outlets, were busy with calls from retailers wondering what had happened to their orders, said Reuben Rosenthal, group vice president for West Coast operations.

“It does them no good to call Purolator,” he said. “They’re getting frustrated and doing that.” The company was directing callers to lottery district offices and telephone sales representatives.

Tom Fat, owner of the Fat City and China Camp restaurants, left the lottery office empty-handed Wednesday afternoon but vowed to return early Thursday to get 2,000 tickets.

“If I don’t get them I’ll be very unhappy, because obviously tomorrow is a key day,” he said.

Lottery officials will underscore the importance of the game’s opening day with a noontime ceremony in San Diego and a musical evening fireworks show.

At 11 a.m. three school buses, a double-decker bus, mimes, musicians, jugglers and clowns will parade from Horton Plaza to the Broadway Pier. There, San Diego schools Supt. Thomas Payzant and other education officials will look on as a trained animal--its species has not been disclosed--demon-strates how to play the instant-winner game.

Publicists say precisely 50,001 green and orange balloons will be released from the pier at 12:30 p.m., when sales will begin throughout the state. At 8 p.m. the lottery will complete a day of self-promotion with a 10-minute fireworks display on the B Street Pier, choreographed to music broadcast by KFMB-FM radio. Broadway Pier and Harbor Island are lottery officials’ recommended viewing positions for the fireworks show.

The public festivities will reflect the strategies underpinning the lottery’s promotion. The presence of school officials will emphasize that the lottery is a fund-raiser for public education in California--one-third of all proceeds will go to the state’s schools. Fun, not gambling, will be the theme of the day.

“The vitality and health of the lottery depends on making it socially acceptable,” Gerry Rubin, president of the Los Angeles advertising firm that developed the game’s multimillion-dollar promotional campaign, told members of the Advertising Club of San Diego Wednesday.

Giving advertising professionals an inside look at the campaign, Rubin, president of Needham Harper Worldwide Inc., said ads for the lottery consistently would note that there is more to the lottery than winning. Ads will describe the lottery as inexpensive, clean fun that builds the state’s future by strengthening its schools.

Nonetheless, Rubin said the lottery’s initial television commercial--a kindly country storekeeper placing a lottery decal on his door as a school bus drives by--has already given way to an ad that ends with a cowboy kicking up his heels after winning a big prize.

Lottery hoopla will not be limited to official celebrations.

Some flower stores will give away tickets with the purchase of a rose. A chain of stereo shops is advertising a free ticket giveaway to the first customers through its doors this afternoon. A pizza parlor on University Avenue will throw in one ticket with every pie purchased.

Buford Seals, the owner of a self-described “kooky” candy store in Ocean Beach, has an angle on the lottery that he believes to be unique. He is offering to ship tickets to shut-ins, so they, too, can take a chance on winning $2 to $2 million.

“I want them to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope, so I don’t have to spend money for a 22-cent stamp,” Seals said. “Plus I want a money order or a cashier’s check, so I don’t have a lot of bounced checks.”