State honors Gardena market--it’s a hot spot to play a lot of Lotto.

Spot Market in Gardena sells sandwiches, beer, groceries and lottery tickets--lots of lottery tickets. So many lottery tickets that the store itself could fund a couple of school systems with all the lottery money officials say it has raised for education.

Owner Brian Kunibe, 34, was honored by state lottery officials last week as the retailer of the year for his work in selling and promoting the tickets. Since the lottery started six years ago, Spot Market has sold $5.5 million in tickets, one of the highest totals among the 22,000 retailers in the state.

Lottery paraphernalia is everywhere in Spot Market, and an added encouragement for wary buyers is a robot that carries a lottery promotion message on its chest.

Kunibe buys about $25 worth of tickets a week himself, but he attributes his store’s success to his loyal customers who have been bitten by the gambling bug. Other than that, the only reason he can think of for being one of the lottery’s leading lights is the store’s high-visibility location on busy Western Avenue not far from the city’s two card clubs.

When the Lotto jackpot spirals into the millions, it is not uncommon for the lottery line at Spot Market to stretch out the door and for customers to drop hundreds of dollars at a time for tickets. The record for Spot Market is a neighborhood man who bought 4,000 chances at the big win, Kunibe said.

“We haven’t hit a big jackpot, but I think we’re due,” Kunibe said.

More than 100 of Kunibe’s customers were on hand Wednesday when state lottery officials presented Kunibe with a Caribbean cruise and a sheet cake with the lottery symbol in green and yellow icing.

Nick Serrao, a 42-year Gardena resident who sells Christmas trees and watermelons for a living, admitted to spending $90 a week in lottery tickets from Spot Market.

But shhhhhh!

“Don’t tell my wife,” Serrao said.