Just One Thing After Another, and All Good

Lady luck hadn’t been too kind lately to Bob and Amy Fisher of Mission Viejo. Bob, 29, a former auto mechanic, had been out of work for nearly a year and a half after undergoing back surgery in 1983.

But their luck took a turn for the better on Friday--then another turn, and another. First, the Fishers won $10 on two lottery tickets they bought at a gas station early in the morning on their way to Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, where Amy Fisher, also 29, gave birth to Gregory Scott Fisher, a healthy 8 pounds, 4 ounces.

Enough already, right?

But Bob Fisher, on his way home “to crash on the bed,” he said, stopped at the same Arco station and cashed in his two winners from that morning for 10 more tickets.

The 21 tickets they bought Thursday had all been duds.

But Friday morning, Fisher was blazing hot. “I was lying on the bed, watching TV and scratching (the tickets) off and suddenly--I think it was the ninth ticket--there it was. F-i-i-ve grand,” he said. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

Fisher told his 91-year-old great-grandmother the news and then called his wife at the hospital.

“He called me and asked me if I was sitting down,” Amy Fisher said, resting in her hospital bed after the Caesarean birth that morning. “What a stupid question! Then he told me that we’d won $5,000--I didn’t believe him at first. He’s such a kidder.”

But her husband wasn’t kidding, and he drove straight to county lottery headquarters in Anaheim to turn in the ticket.

“Maybe now we’ll be able to buy a house next year,” Fisher said. He, his wife, and their son, Michael, 2, have been living in Fisher’s father’s house in Mission Viejo. Fisher has been working again since July as a warranty claims representative.

“I couldn’t turn a wrench anymore because of my back--I had to take a desk job,” Fisher said. “Maybe this is the beginning of a stretch of good luck.”

“We’ll keep playing--maybe $20 a week--even though this will probably never happen again,” he said.