$12.8-Million Lottery Winner Will Start the New Year Off Right

Carol Johnson’s ship came in, but she hasn’t boarded it yet.

“I guess I just won’t believe it until I get the check,” said the Escondido woman who on Wednesday night came into a quick and cool $12.8 million as winner of the state Lotto 6/49 drawing.

Johnson, 47, the sole top winner in Wednesday’s drawing, says she wants to change her life style just a little, despite the windfall that will net her about $524,000 a year in 20 annual installments beginning in January.

Sure, she’d like to buy a “simple little” house in Escondido, where she has lived for 20 years. She, her 25-year-old son and her 27-year-old daughter and 3-year-old granddaughter live together in a small apartment in Escondido.

Maybe a Restaurant

Yeah, she’s thinking about bankrolling a restaurant to be managed by her daughter, Debbie, who now works part-time with a housecleaning service.

New cars for her, Debbie and son Wayne, of course. What kind? “Gee, I dunno. Who’s had time to think?”

And naturally she’ll quit her job at Hewlett-Packard Co. in nearby Rancho Bernardo, where she works in the firm’s computer tape library.

“But mostly I’m still just sitting here wondering, ‘What am I gonna do?’ ” says the woman who describes herself as a homebody and whose notion of excitement is a night of country-western dancing and an annual pilgrimage to the Las Vegas slots.

“I know one thing--I haven’t bought anything yet,” she said Friday after her identity was released by Lotto officials who verified her jackpot. “I guess I need to see that check first.”

The time from Wednesday night’s drawing until she showed up at the San Diego regional office of the Lotto on Thursday afternoon were anxious hours, she said.

The winning ticket was one of two computer “quick picks” she purchased earlier Wednesday evening, after she got off work. “I didn’t like the numbers, but I thought, ‘C’mon Carol, don’t buy another one. These will do.’ ”

She plopped herself in front of the television for the Lotto drawing and jotted the numbers down on a slip of paper. Then she compared them to her ticket--again and again and again. Next she called the store where she bought it to confirm she had written the numbers down correctly. Then she called a friend, getting her out of bed, for some advice. “And I don’t even remember what she said, I was so excited,” Johnson said.

But she remembers someone warning her not to lose the ticket, so she put it under her mattress. She didn’t fall asleep until after 4 in the morning. That afternoon she turned her ticket in for verification.

Parade of Visitors

Since then, it has been constant phone calls and a parade of friends to her front door, wishing her well, Johnson said. Since her telephone number is unlisted and since she has declined to be photographed, she hopes she can avoid, at least for a while, any gold diggers.

The excitement is being shared by a friend who arrived from the Modesto area Wednesday night, about the time of the drawing.

“She said it’s been so crazy around here, she’s gonna go back home,” Johnson said. “But, she’s still here.”