Luckiest Man Keeps On Spinning

The luckiest man in the history of the California State Lottery’s “Big Spin” says he owes his good fortune to Abe Lincoln and Japan’s tallest mountain.

Camarillo resident Warrick Woodard will make an unprecedented third appearance on the televised “Big Spin” show Saturday night--armed with some pebbles from Fujiyama and a Lincoln penny he found in a parking lot. Three others have appeared twice.

Woodard, a 48-year-old U.S. Navy boatswain’s mate stationed at Port Hueneme, said Wednesday that kissing the penny and the rocks last year before spinning the lottery’s wheel of fortune helped him win a total of $1,010,000 in his first two appearances.

“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 in a lazy, Southern drawl.

He is the first person in the 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 getting picked three times can’t be calculated. But it’s safe to say they are really astronomical,” Schade said. “This guy has the luckiest streak of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Woodard is guaranteed to win $10,000 simply by appearing on the show, Schade said. But if his luck holds out, Woodard could win $2 million.

Things certainly weren’t going so well for the enlisted man early last year, Woodard said. He and his wife, Darlene, were living on opposite coasts while waiting for affordable housing to open up at the Ventura County base.

Then the sailor, who was living in barracks, found his lucky penny in the parking lot of a convenience store near Port Hueneme and began buying about 12 scratch-off 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.

Darlene Woodard, 40, promptly moved out to Camarillo from Stafford, Va., and the couple bought a $250,000 house and a new car.

Their phenomenal luck hasn’t changed the couple all that much, Warrick Woodard says. He does not plan to retire from the Navy until 1993, when his hitch is up, although he says he is considering starting a second career as a building contractor.