All Walks of Life Make a Run on Riches in Record Day for Lotto

There are few equalizers in life, where the high-brow and the low-brow and those in between are thrown together without regard for status or social standing. Being stuck with survivors on a raft in the open sea would be one. Waiting at the DMV is another. And, of course, standing in line to buy Lotto tickets is another.

That’s what a chance at winning $67 million does to people. Throughout California on Wednesday, thousands of residents queued up in supermarkets, liquor stores and any other businesses where Lotto tickets are sold, for an opportunity to win the largest lottery jackpot in the state’s history.

Men in dark blue suits next to retired women in polyester pants, the young with the old, the dirt-stained construction worker waiting with the finely coiffed matron, the black with the white, Democrats and Republicans--all buying tickets so fast that the lottery was breaking records by the hour.

Between 11 a.m. and noon, 4.4 million tickets were sold, a new hourly record. It lasted three hours. Between 2 and 3 p.m., 4.5 million were sold. That record lasted an hour. Between 3 and 4 p.m., 4,512,153 tickets were sold. “And we haven’t hit what is traditionally our busiest time, at 6,” said Susan Kossack, public affairs director for the California Lottery in Sacramento.

Her prediction was right, as Lotto officials reported late Wednesday that more than 6.2 million tickets were sold between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., setting a record for the third time in one day.

When sales closed at 7:45 p.m., more than $50.5 million worth of Lotto tickets had been sold at a rate averaging 951 tickets a second, breaking the old single-day sales record of $31.5 million set Oct. 29, 1988.

Those tickets were sold to people such as Michael Kidane, who waited

patiently in line at the bustling 7-Eleven store in the 200 block of I Street in Chula Vista to put down $1. Only one set of numbers will win, he says. “That’s why I’m spending a dollar.”

Sold to people such as Claire Prendergast, retired and living in Chula Vista. She plays every week, as regular as a heartbeat, betting $5 each Wednesday and $5 each Saturday at the 7-Eleven.

“I really can’t afford it, but I do it,” she says jovially. And if she wins, her red 1976 Buick with the white top is history. “I need some new clothes, too, and a vacation. I have a couple of brothers. I’d like to make them happy.”

Then there are the “poolers,” the people in offices and neighborhoods and just about any other place where people associate who unite when the Lotto is full and buy tickets by the thousands.

People like Frank Bilyeu, owner of San Diego’s Cork & Bottle in the 2600 block of Mission Village Drive. He and 22 of his friends chipped in $100 each and bought 2,300 tickets. They do it every time the jackpot reaches $20 million, he said, displaying the large batch of orange and white tickets.

People like the unidentified woman in Sacramento who purchased 30,000 tickets at a hardware store. It took eight hours to run the tickets through the machine. Lottery officials believe that a group of 30 people pooled their money to buy those tickets, another Lotto record in a day of records.

The chance of yet another roll-over, of no one winning the $62 million, is remote. Lottery officials said Wednesday that the pace of buying has been so feverish that 98% to 99% of the possible 13.9 million Lotto combinations have been sold, leaving the national Lotto record of $115.5 million in Pennsylvania intact.

What’s also likely, lottery officials said, is that there will be more than one winner. California’s six largest Lotto jackpots have all had multiple winners, officials said. The biggest, the $61.9-million prize in 1988, was split among 41 winners, including a large pool of workers at a Fallbrook Hospital.

Huge Lotto prizes will probably become more common late this spring when the Lotto game increases from a field of 49 numbers to 53.