Record Lotto Payoff : Laguna Niguel Woman to Share $68-Million Jackpot With 3 Others

A Laguna Niguel woman who purchased her winning lottery ticket at a neighborhood convenience market will share a record $68.5-million Lotto jackpot with at least three other Southern California residents, lottery officials said Thursday.

The four winning tickets in Wednesday night’s Lotto 6-49 drawing are each worth $17.14 million. Other winning tickets in the lottery’s largest payoff ever were purchased in Simi Valley, West Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Joan Young turned in her ticket at the California Lottery office in Orange on Thursday morning, where she filled out forms and was interviewed by lottery personnel.

She is scheduled to discuss her winnings at a press conference with other lottery winners Wednesday at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

After taxes, the winners will collect annual payments of $685,000 for 20 years, according to lottery officials.

Young purchased the winning ticket at a Circle K market on Crown Valley Parkway in Laguna Niguel this week.

After the numbers were announced on television Wednesday night, Young called the Circle K to check the number once more and make sure that her ticket was a winner, said the store’s manager, Maher Altahan.

“It was a wonderful surprise,” Altahan said. “When the customer called and told me (she) had all six numbers, I didn’t know what to say. I was so excited.”

Pete Kegley, another manager at the store, said the number of lottery players had increased in the days and hours leading up to the Wednesday night drawing. The store usually serves residents who live in the area as well as people going to the beach, but Kegley said he noticed more unfamiliar customers buying lottery tickets at the store in recent days.

Each retailer who sold a winning lottery ticket will receive $85,700, or 0.5% of its value. Altahan said Circle K corporate officials will decide what happens to the money, but he thinks some of it should go to the staff of three people at the Crown Valley Parkway market.

Altahan, who himself plays the lottery, said the jackpot gives him another reason to keep buying tickets. “It is very lucky. I am going to keep on playing. One day, it will be my day.”

A Simi Valley woman with six children, 11 grandchildren and a host of unpaid bills also picked all six numbers correctly.

Lydia Neufeld, an employee at a Simi Valley collection agency, said her winning ticket was one of 15 she purchased at a nearby 7-Eleven store. She said her good fortune came at a time when she was just making ends meet.

“Believe me, we have gone through some struggles,” Neufeld said as friends, relatives and television news crews descended on her home. “For a while, our house was in jeopardy and my husband was unemployed because of an accident he had at work.”

Neufeld’s husband, a plasterer, recently returned to work.

Neufeld said the annual payments from the lottery will be a considerable improvement over the $50,000 she and her husband, Dave, earned last year.

Another winner was Michael Yang of Valencia, who purchased his ticket at a West Los Angeles gas station and mini-market.

Lottery officials said the holders of the fourth winning ticket, purchased at the Ranch Liquor and Deli in Long Beach, had not come forward as of Thursday afternoon.

But store manager Frank McDonald said an elderly pensioner and frequent customer had come to the store with his wife to tell workers he had won. “He’s still in kind of a state of shock,” McDonald said. “He looked kind of tired. I think he’s been up all night.”

McDonald said he couldn’t remember the man’s name. But Barbie Tizon, the store’s night manager, said the man and his wife had bought several hundred dollars worth of tickets just hours before the drawing.

The odds of picking all six winning numbers in the lottery are 14 million to 1. But that didn’t stop Californians from lining up across the state in record numbers to buy lottery tickets.

More than 6.2 million of the $1 tickets were sold between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday, shattering the old single-hour record of 4.5 million tickets set just two hours earlier, lottery spokesman John Schade said.

Wednesday’s ticket sales started at 5 a.m., an hour earlier than normal. When sales closed at 7:45 p.m., more than $50.5 million 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.

California’s previous jackpot record was $61.98 million, set on Oct. 29, 1988. Forty-eight people shared the prize, including a group of 15 San Diego County hospital workers.

Wednesday’s jackpot was the fourth largest lottery jackpot in the nation and the third largest for the game of Lotto. Other big payoffs have included a $114-million jackpot at a keno-type lottery game in Pennsylvania and a $70-million Lotto jackpot in Illinois.

“It’s been very exciting these last few days,” said lottery spokeswoman Joanne McNabb. “It’s like working on the Olympics or a political campaign. . . . The most fun part is getting to talk to the winners.”

COUNTY LOTTO WINNERS OVER $2.5 MILLION

Date Name City Amount Oct. 29, 1988 Ronald Smith Westminster $20,660,000 Aug. 24, 1988 Christene Lentz Capistrano Beach 19,580,000 Feb. 21, 1990 Joan Young Laguna Niguel 17,140,000 Nov. 23, 1988 Zafer Altintas Irvine 14,800,000 March 4, 1989 Amador Granados Anaheim 11,220,000 Dec. 13, 1989 Arthur N. Shaw Santa Ana 10,100,000 May 18, 1988 Herbans Grewal Anaheim 10,080,000 April 15, 1989 William Peterson Huntington Beach 6,880,000 April 29, 1989 Lenore Bentson Seal Beach 6,760,000 July 19, 1989 Patrick Ketcham Costa Mesa 5,640,000 July 20, 1988 Jean Lamphere Cypress 5,440,000 Sept. 27, 1989 Brent Richins El Toro 5,300,000 March 11, 1989 Greg Stannard Cypress 5,180,000 March 23, 1988 Jeffrey Payne Buena Park 3,460,000 Nov. 16, 1988 Manuela Garcia Fullerton 3,060,000 Dec. 21, 1988 Carlos Alvarez Westminster 2,760,000 June 7, 1989 Claudia Lantry-Viney Westminster 2,740,000 Oct. 5, 1988 Richard Gronos Newport Beach 2,600,000

Source: California Lottery