Hits Lotto Jackpot, Immediately Quits Job : $200-a-Week Clerk Wins $20 Million

Sheryl Busch, who nets $200 a week as a night clerk at a convenience store in the suburban Sacramento community of Elk Grove, on Thursday won the California Lottery jackpot of $20 million and immediately quit her job.

Busch, 45, a single mother of two adult daughters and a teen-age son, said when she learned of her instant multimillionaire status she told her supervisor: “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is you’d better get someone to work for me tonight because I’m not coming in.”

Busch, flanked at a press conference by her live-in companion of five years, truck driver Lloyd Bell, said she quit her job at the Circle K store in Elk Grove but has no plans yet to spend her fortune except to travel throughout the nation. Her 17-year-old son, David, has put in a pitch for a new car, Busch said.

Busch moved 18 months ago from the Mojave Desert town of Apple Valley to Lodi, a Central Valley town about 38 miles south of Sacramento. A couple of months later she took the convenience store job in nearby rural Elk Grove, a rapidly growing bedroom community of Sacramento. Until a few years ago, it long was regarded as a cowboy town.

Busch’s jackpot totaled $20,080,000 and was the fifth biggest in California Lottery history. After taxes, she will be paid $803,200 annually for 20 years.

Since late March, seven of the lottery’s Lotto 6/49 winners who won $1 million or more lived within a radius of less than 50 miles of Sacramento, including two who split $51.4 million, the largest lottery jackpot in North American history.

Busch purchased $40 worth of “quick-pick” tickets at the convenience store Wednesday evening. Under the “quick-pick” system, the winning numbers are selected at random by computer. The winners were 2, 10, 19, 25, 37 and 48.

In addition, Busch, who said she is a regular player and estimated that she and Bell have invested up to $600 in the lottery, also won a separate $2,468 for picking five of the six winning numbers on another card.

“It’s strange,” Busch told reporters of her new wealth. “It’s unreal.”

She said she earned $200 a week in take-home pay at the convenience store and wondered aloud, “I’m a Circle K clerk. What chance do I have at winning? Generally, it is somebody else that wins the big money. But we got to be somebody else this time.”

As for continuing to play the lottery, Busch said she sees no reason to quit. “I might hit it again.”