Lottery for Poor: There’s Always Hope

Tony Alvarez scrutinized his latest lottery ticket only briefly--just long enough to determine that it was another loser. He nonchalantly tossed it in the trash upon leaving the El Toro market in Santa Ana on Thursday.

The experience did nothing to tarnish his optimism.

Alvarez, a 19-year-old with a sleekly angled flattop, is a member of the Marine reserves at Miramar Naval Air Station. He has no other employment.

He buys about five lottery tickets every week. Although Alvarez has never won more than $5, he believes the tickets are a perfectly sound investment in his future.

“I just want to hit the big one and retire,” he said with a gambler’s grin. “One of my dad’s friends got on the ‘Big Spin’ a couple weeks ago and won $100,000. So I think it’s possible.”

The manager of the market, Rudy Navarrette, said he often sees customers--many with families to support--buying lottery tickets they can ill-afford.

His market is one of the more popular lottery outlets in central Santa Ana, selling more than 4,400 tickets a week during Game 5, according to the district office of the California Lottery Commission.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t have anything compared to me and you, but they would spend their last dollar on the lottery,” Navarrette said. “It’s sad. I hate seeing things like that, but I see it all day long.

“Every time they buy one, they’re thinking they might hit the big one and be able to retire and live well the rest of their lives.”

In subtle but sinister ways, far removed from the weekly televised glory of the “Big Spin,” California’s lottery is ensnaring low-income people, opponents of legalized gambling contend.

Their fears are bolstered by a Los Angeles Times Poll that found that 72% of the lottery players always put their winnings directly into the purchase of more tickets. Such a practice greatly increases the odds that the player will eventually lose his initial investment.

“That’s the trouble,” complained an official of Gamblers Anonymous. “When they hit a $2 or a $5 winner, they never cash it in. They buy more tickets.”

Last fall, when the lottery’s first days were greeted by wild enthusiasm, a number of clergy, educators and representatives of organizations that serve the poor said they were afraid low-income residents would buy more tickets than they could afford.

Stores Issued Warning

A nervous Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors warned stores with county contracts to sell food stamps not to apply to the state to sell lottery tickets, at the risk of losing the food-stamp contracts.

And at a small lock-and-key shop in the Martin Luther King Shopping Center in Watts, where 110 people showed up to buy tickets in the first hour of lottery sales, the shop’s manager told a reporter she was worried.

“These are poor people, and they really can’t afford to spend all this money,” Beverly Collins said then.

But these days, Collins says the biggest regular lottery players she has are seven or eight individuals who buy an average of about three tickets every day. She says her fears have proven groundless.

“It doesn’t look the same as it did at the start,” she said.

After spending more than $100 on losing tickets over the months, Fidel Garcia and Gloria Flores, a Santa Ana couple, said they are beginning to develop an immunity to the lottery’s allure.

They still occasionally buy tickets in the remote hope of reversing their luck and striking it rich, but Garcia looks forward to the time when they kick the habit.

“Someday--for the better--we won’t buy anymore,” he said.

Garcia, who is partially disabled, said some of his acquaintances spend up to $20 from Social Security disability checks on the lottery. He believes this only serves to erode their financial situations because “they don’t win anything.”

Just a Diversion

Collins and others familiar with the ticket-buying habits of low-income people say they believe that most have simply recognized the lottery for what it is--a diversion from an often dreary life.

Most ticket buyers, these observers reason, seem capable of employing a dual mentality: At the moment of purchase, they willingly give in to the momentary fantasy that says each ticket is a real chance at a fortune. But in the back of their minds, they also recognize that the odds are too low to warrant a substantial investment, and thus regulate themselves.

Robert Blackshear of Los Angeles puts it more bluntly:

“That’s what gamblin’ is !” said Blackshear, an angular man of 57 who lives off a Social Security disability check. “They’re not guaranteeing you you’re gonna win. Everybody knows that. It’s just a long shot. But anybody gambling is expecting to win, whether they’re ignorant or not.”

Plays It Safe

Blackshear described himself as a regular player--”maybe 10 a week”--but said he was not enamored enough by the game to disrupt his personal priorities.

“I ain’t gonna hurt myself,” he said. “I wouldn’t put myself in jeopardy. It doesn’t get in my way. I wouldn’t even give up my cigarettes for it.

“Most of the time I’ll have a beer or two and I’ll feel lucky and I’ll think, ‘I’ll get me two or three tickets. Mix it up after a beer. I might be lucky.’

“The most I ever won was $4. It’s like going to Vegas. Gambling, you got just as much a chance.”

A reporter had bumped into Blackshear and his friend Jerry Hanah outside Showplace Liquors on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles, a few blocks east of Crenshaw Boulevard, where black neighborhoods fade into burgeoning Latino and Asian neighborhoods to the east and north.

Hanah and Blackshear were killing time. And on a block of old Victorian homes just around the corner from Showplace Liquors, Blackshear was scrutinizing scores of losing lottery tickets that had been scratched outside the store and then thrown into the gutter. A supermarket chain was advertising a drawing for losing lottery tickets, he explained, so he was going to scrape up some. He’d also look for winning tickets that might have inadvertently been thrown away.

Beer Running Out

The cans of beer that Blackshear and Hanah had been drinking from small paper bags were finished. They decided to buy some more tickets.

Hanah was about to walk into the liquor store to buy them when the impulse struck Blackshear. He handed Hanah another dollar and told him to get a lottery ticket.

“We might win something,” Blackshear said.

“If we do, I’m gonna split it with you,” Hanah said good-naturedly.

Hanah bought the ticket and came back. The men decided to take turns scratching off the six emblems.

Hanah scratched off “$25,000” and “$2.” Blackshear told him he could scratch off the rest, too.

Hanah scratched off a “$500.” Then another “$500.” One more and they would win.

He scratched off another “$2.” Now they had a chance at winning two ways.

Hanah scratched the last emblem. It was “$25,000.” They had three pairs. They were losers.

Times staff writer Juan Arancibia contributed to this report.