Back to the Well : Already $1 Million Ahead, Camarillo Man to Spin Lottery Wheel 3rd Time

The only man in state lottery history to win three appearances on the “Big Spin” said Wednesday he owes his good fortune to Abe Lincoln and Japan’s tallest mountain.

Warrick Woodard, 48, of Camarillo will make an unprecedented third appearance on the lottery’s television show Saturday night--armed with some pebbles from Mt. Fuji and a penny he found in a parking lot.

Woodard, a Navy boatswain’s mate at Port Hueneme, said that kissing the penny and the rocks before spinning the lottery’s wheel during two appearances on the TV show last year helped him win $1,010,000.

“I was a poor country boy making $25,000 a year before I found this penny and took out this holy rock from my collection of travel mementos,” Woodard said.

Woodard is the first person in the California State Lottery’s three-year history to win three chances to spin the wheel, lottery spokesman John Schade said. Lottery officials hold a weekly drawing of scratch-off ticket winners to select contestants for the half-hour show.

The odds of being picked three times are “really astronomical,” Schade said. “This guy has the luckiest streak of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Three other people have been on the Big Spin twice, Schade said.

Woodard is guaranteed another $10,000 simply by appearing on the show. But if his lucky charms really come through for him, he could win another $2 million.

Found Lucky Penny

Before Woodard struck it rich on the Big Spin, he said, things weren’t going that well in his life. He and his wife, Darlene, were living on opposite coasts while they waited for affordable housing to become available at the Port Hueneme base.

Then Woodard, who was living in a barracks on the base, found his lucky penny in the parking lot of a nearby convenience store and began buying about 12 lottery tickets a week, he said.

He won $10,000 on the show in April. Five weeks later, he won $1 million, which lottery officials said he will receive in $50,000 annual installments over the next 20 years.

After his big win, his wife, 40, promptly moved to Camarillo from Stafford, Va. The couple bought a $250,000 house and a new car.

But the Woodards say their phenomenal luck hasn’t changed them much.

Warrick Woodard said he doesn’t plan to retire from the Navy until 1993 when his hitch is up. And Darlene Woodard complained that the price of Wonder bread is more than twice as much in Camarillo as in Virginia.

“I just got so sick to my stomach from nerves the day we won a million dollars,” she said. “Maybe the penny and those stones are all psychological, but, heck, if it works, go for it.”