Claude Jones: $11,000 State of California: $9,000 : Castaic Tops the List of Lottery Winners and He’s the Reason Why

In this dusty town of curbless streets, parched grass, fast-food places and quick-stop stores live more lottery winners per capita than any other spot in California.

His name is Claude Jones.

A sweet-talking giant of a man given to blue-and-white seersucker jumpsuits, the bespectacled Jones has played enough and won enough to statistically throw this town of 900 off the charts when it comes to calculating lottery winners per household throughout the state.

It’s a record-setting distinction that excites the bucolic Jones enough to murmur, “Jesus, that’s good, isn’t it?”

A man of folksy charm, the 55-year-old Jones and partner Jack Mundorf, 69, have been co-owners of the Mobile Mini-Mart for 14 years.

(“Yeah, we keep getting calls for the Mobil station across the way,” Jones’ wife, Shirley, patiently explained. “We don’t sell gas, but we used to be one of those traveling stands.”)

Now, settled in their tiny store across from the fire station on Old Ridge Road, they sell snuff, fishing licenses, pudding pies, carmel corn, beer and about 3,800 lottery tickets a week.

One of two lottery retail outlets in town, the Mini-Mart does a brisk business right in its own back room, a cluttered storage spot for cartons of wine coolers, cans of paint, boxes of fishing tackle and the remains of yesterday’s breakfast.

Sitting at a table at its center, Jones laughingly calls it his “scratching room.” And, as Mundorf puts it, enough latex has been scratched from lottery tickets there “to keep the floors waxed.”

$9,000 Worth

In all, Jones owns up to spending about $9,000 on the $1 tickets since the lottery got going last October.

He’s won $11,000, which goes a long way toward explaining how little Castaic, with its 168 households, ranked a runaway first in a Times compilation of winners per household. The ranking included winners of $100 or more in all the state’s ZIP code zones.

Castaic earned its spot with a ratio of one winner for every 12 households in Game 2 and one in 8 in Game 3. In most communities, the figure was more like one in 100 in both games.

“I play and I play heavy, too,” drawled Jones, a man prone to understatement. “I’m a gambler.”

In the handprinted list of big winners kept out front by the cash register, the name Claude Jones appears frequently. He’s won eight $100 prizes, one $200 prize and, in Game 2, came away with a $10,000 bonanza. He doesn’t keep track of anything less.

He’s also managed to scratch off a dozen or so entry cards for the “Big Spin,” but hasn’t gotten the nod yet.

As if to remind himself that so far he’s just a “little bit” ahead, Jones keeps cardboard boxes jammed with losing tickets in the storeroom. The cartons are piled next to a safe that holds a faded photocopy of that one $10,000 winner.

Occasionally, he chips in with Mundorf and a couple of other fellows to buy huge blocks of tickets to better the odds.

One time, he recalled, “Me and the other guys, we bought $4,000 in tickets. We won $1,000 out of that.”

Another time, they bought $2,100 worth. They won $1,000 back.

“But,” Jones boasted, “that $10,000 I got by myself.”

He got it the same day he’d decided to quit playing after a string of bad luck. Like many a frustrated smoker, he didn’t quit for long.

“I walked out in front, told Sherry, one of the women who works here, ‘Give me one of those no-good lottery tickets.’ She handed me a ticket. I scratched it and said, ‘Sherry, uh, verify that for me.’ It kind of stuns you a bit.”

Business Boomed

For a store that sells the most lottery tickets in town (Dave’s Interstate station across the freeway sells 1,200 to 1,500 per week), the win was good for business.

“After that, a lot more people came in,” Jones said happily. “And anybody coming in, I’d show it to them.”

But when it comes to explaining what happened to the $10,000 (actually $8,000, after taxes) he turns a bit sheepish.

He will say only that he bought a little silver, “a good buy at $5.22 an ounce,” and a few more lottery tickets.

If his practiced way of scratching them off is any indication, it was a whole lot more tickets. Using his lucky silver pocket knife, Jones can uncover an entire card with a single swipe.

He vows to continue taking knife in hand for one very good reason. Leaning forward, Jones whispers in a word what that motivation is:

“Winning.”

Crossing the fingers of both of his hands, he said, “I want to go on that spin.”

With a nod toward his wife, he explained, “I told her I was going to buy her a Rolls-Royce if I won $10 million . . . a Rolls-Royce pickup truck.”