O.C. Winners Hope for Another Jackpot : Luck: A used-car salesman who won $16.4 million and stayed on the job and some office poolers who garnered $247,320 wonder if Lotto lightning can strike twice.

It was only seven months ago that Ricardo Velazquez’s luck changed his life forever. That’s when he won $16.4 million with a lottery ticket he bought at a Santa Ana liquor store.

On Tuesday, with tremendous odds against him, the South Orange County resident was hoping to repeat his incredible good fortune by joining the millions of Californians buying chances for what could be the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history.

“I’ll call you tomorrow when I win the lottery, OK?” Velazquez said optimistically.

At the Santa Ana Civic Center, an office pool in Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth’s office also is hoping that lightning will strike twice. After winning $247,320 in October, 1989, the nine-member pool has bought in again, hoping to become ex-county employees.

“We are, like everyone else, waiting with bated breath for our imminent departure from county government,” Roth’s executive assistant, Dan C. Wooldridge, joked.

With the clock ticking toward tonight’s 7:57 drawing of the California Lotto jackpot--expected to total more than $120 million, surpassing the national record of $115.5 million--ticket buyers are standing in line or joining office pools for what could be the chance of a lifetime.

“I don’t like gambling,” said Carol Yu, a member of the Western Medical Center-Santa Ana radiology department’s Lotto pool. “This is just for fun.”

Doctors, nurses and clerks at the hospital’s outpatient clinic have formed a separate 30-member, $5-per-person pool. Hopes are high, but expectations are low, Sue Eiler said.

“My best guess would be that the majority of the people (in the pool) will not remember to watch the numbers” being drawn, Eiler said.

The small office pools that have formed for the drawing pale in comparison to the 55,000 chances purchased by Phil Gillespie of the Illinois-based U.S. Lottery Group. California lottery spokesman John Schade said that could be the largest single lottery purchase ever made in the state.

Gillespie, who looks for large jackpots and buys lottery tickets for thousands of clients nationwide, said the odds “are pretty great” that one of his clients could win. Several customers have invested thousands of dollars individually.

But, he added, most of his clients have realistic expectations.

“They know the odds, and they know it’s a shot in the dark.”

Still, there are the optimists like Wooldridge, whose pool used the same numbers on tickets purchased from the same liquor store in Orange that had brought them the previous winnings.

At Western Exterminator Co. in Santa Ana, manager Diane O’Neill said the 22 members of her $5-per-person office pool already have figured that a $100-million jackpot would bring each of them about $14,000 per month for 20 years after taxes.

Similar calculations have been made at Gish Biomedical Inc. in Santa Ana, where 17 workers ranging from the company president, Jack Brown, to accountants, secretaries and maintenance workers have bought $175 worth of Lotto tickets and are fantasizing about what they will do if they win the jackpot.

“If we win, we are thinking we might place a want ad that says: ‘Wanted, a whole company . . . ‘ “ said Ursula Spano, secretary to the company’s chief financial officer and organizer of the pool.

Ellie, an accountant at Gish, which manufactures equipment used in open-heart surgery, said she doesn’t want to disclose her last name for fear that salespeople may descend on her if she wins. She has figured that if the company pool gets lucky, each member may take home about $197,000 a year for the next 20 years.

Ellie said the Gish employees have tentatively agreed that they wouldn’t immediately resign if they win--they would stay on the job long enough for replacements to be hired. “But we would have a limousine pick us up in the morning to take us to work and to bring us a catered lunch.”

Times staff writer Leslie Berkman contributed to this story.