Carlsbad Race Fan’s Fortune Handicapped

Rodolfo Sahagun is confident that he’s on the brink of becoming a millionaire--or at least richer than he had ever hoped. Don’t let his current life style fool you, he says.

He, his wife and their four children are living in a small house in Carlsbad where leaks in the ceiling are patched with plywood, where discarded material serves as curtains, and where two girls share a twin bed and the two boys sleep atop misbegotten mattresses without sheets.

But Sahagun, a resident Mexican alien whose one-time farming business fell apart and who is now disabled, broke and living on welfare, talks with confidence about the day his ship comes in. If not his ship, at least his lawsuit against the Hollywood Park race track and its insurance underwriter.

Picked Nine Winners

In July, 1985, Sahagun was the only horse race fan at Hollywood Park to win a promotional “Million Dollar Handicapping Contest” by successfully picking the winner in each of nine races that particular day.

To the verified winner went $1 million--in 20 annual installments of $50,000 each.

“I jumped higher than a goat,” he said at the time. “I was jumping around and running back and forth. . . . My wife made me calm down by saying they would announce who had won and then I would be sure.”

The story of the race fan who picked all nine winners for a million dollars made headlines from coast to coast.

Sahagun had turned in three tickets, each with somewhat different picks, and his wife turned in a fourth.

Hollywood Park seemed as elated as Sahagun at the time, and had him sign waivers for publicity. But the dream soured within days when an audit revealed what Sahagun said he never intended to hide: that he had turned in three tickets. Heck, he had signed each one. What was there to hide?

Contest rules said one ticket per customer.

Hollywood Park officials voided Sahagun’s victory, saying he had broken the rules of the game.

Protested the Decision

Sahagun got an attorney, and protested the decision. For starters, Sahagun said, there was no mention on the face of the pick-nine card that there was only one card per customer. Indeed, that particular rule was listed on the flip side of the card--but Sahagun said he never read the flip side, and there was no mention on the front of the card that other rules were on the back. He never looked.

Instead, on the face of the card there was only a reference: “Complete contest rules in Operations Office.”

Further, Sahagun complained that even the more complete rules were, at least by his thinking, a bit ambiguous. “No more than one entry per person will be allowed for each day of the contest,” the rule stated.

“There were nine days of racing during the contest,” Sahagun rationalizes. “So, I could have put in nine tickets. I only put in four. It seems to me I could have put in five more, even.”

Sahagun’s attorney, George Martinez, suggests he will make somewhat more sophisticated legal arguments when the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Torrance, finally gets a hearing date.

Doing Special Research

“My law firm is doing some special research in an area I’m not comfortable discussing because I don’t want (the strategy) known to the opposing attorneys,” Martinez said.

“We’re making sure our steps are founded well within the law, so it will come to a quick and total completion when we do act,” he said, declining further comment.

But one argument being made by Martinez, according to the court documents, is that, when Hollywood Park got Sahagun’s waiver for publicity, it in fact cemented the fact that he had won the contest and waived on their own part any subsequent reversal of the announcement that he won.

John Slezak, a Los Angeles attorney representing Hollywood Park, said he is confident that Martinez’s lawsuit on behalf of Sahagun won’t go anywhere, and that the case is all but moot.

“We have satisfied ourselves his case doesn’t have any merit,” Slezak said. And he noted that several pretrial motions addressing some of Sahagun’s contentions have already been resolved in Hollywood Park’s favor.

Living Poor Man’s Existence

Slezak said the mere fact that Sahagun signed a publicity waiver did not in itself validate his win. “At the time he signed it, we had no concept that, of the 30,000-plus tickets, there were three from Rodolfo Sahagun,” he said. That discovery came later.

Sahagun, meanwhile, is living a poor man’s existence, confident that one day--maybe within 18 months, if the 2 1/2-year-old lawsuit goes to trial that fast, he’ll be a rich man.

“With the help of God and the courts--God’s help first--I will have that money,” Sahagun says. “Every day when I need to buy something, but I don’t have the money, I think about that money. But it’s not a dream. It’s my money, and I know they’ll have to give it to me. What are they waiting for?”

Sahagun’s life and times parallel a roller coaster journey; he’s now in yet another dip, but he says he is sure he will reach great heights again, as soon as that money comes in.

He entered the United States in 1948 and moved around California as a seasonal farm worker before eventually settling down with legal status in Carlsbad. He worked for years as a gardener, then leased 53 acres of farmland to grow tomatoes, Italian zucchini, green beans and other crops.

Purchased 10 Acres

He eventually purchased 10 acres of his own, bought a house, a $38,000 farm tractor, and a $12,000 truck. America, he reckoned, really was the land of opportunity.

But he badly sprained his back in 1969, he said, and that injury, coupled with intense competition from large farms in the area, caught up with him over the next 12 years. He declared bankruptcy in 1981, lost everything and moved to the small house he lives in now, on a large farm off El Camino Real in Carlsbad.

His situation worsened in 1982 when he pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor count of child molestation and was placed on probation. He chooses not to discuss the issue as a matter of history.

But the roller coaster picked up again later that year when he and a brother-in-law won $25,000 at the races one day. Horses, he says, are his only vice. His share of the purse, after taxes, was about $9,700. But that money, he said, was quickly claimed by creditors, and the roller coaster plummeted again.

Then, in 1985, came what he thought was his million-dollar day at Hollywood Park, and the roller coaster ride continued on the upswing. A few weeks later, he was disqualified, and there he was again, at the bottom.

But Sahagun is an optimist.

He talks proudly of his boys’ athletic prowess. He shows the trophies and the ribbons on display in the living room, including a dozen or so medals that are Scotch-taped to a picture frame. He shows press clippings of his oldest child, Rudy, in a wrestling bout. He shows baby pictures of the two girls that hang on the living room walls. And he shows pictures of himself and his new bride, Consepcion, in 1972.

‘They Don’t Want to Share’

Then he draws attention to the velveteen picture of the Last Supper that hangs over the dining table.

“Do you see Jesus sharing the bread? Well, these people at the race track, they don’t want to share anything. It’s not even really a million dollars. It’s half the interest on what a million dollars makes every year,” he said.

So the Sahagun family continues to struggle on $964 a month in welfare benefits. He talks about how the 1972 Volkswagen is about ready to be buried; how the wife needs new slacks, and how the kids really hope they get the money “so they can go to Disneyland.”

He said he wants the money so he can buy farmland, and give it another try.

“I am very sad now,” he says. “I become very depressed. I won that money, and they haven’t given it to me yet. I won it fair and square, and I’m going to get it one way or the other. I know I will, because God helped me with the horses.”