Pssst, Buddy, I Got the Winning Ticket Right Here

There was a lucky feel to the $5 Lotto ticket I was carrying in my pocket Wednesday. A $117.1-million feel, in fact.

So why wouldn’t Beth Conover trade her $9.99 compact disc of Johnny Paycheck singing “Take This Job and Shove It” for such a sure winner? Why didn’t Regina Cowen want to swap a $6.68 rib sandwich for it? Why couldn’t I talk Bernice Canty into giving me a mere $2 for it?

Because when it comes to the lottery, people in Los Angeles don’t like to throw their money around.

“I want to buy my own tickets,” explained Canty, a retired department store worker standing near the back of a long Lotto line at the rear of Page Pharmacy on Wilshire Boulevard. She had $2 in her hand and a determined look on her face.

Behind her, Nick Urbino, a graphic designer from Los Angeles, refused my offer to sell him my $5 ticket for the bargain price of $4. “I wouldn’t buy a ticket if I didn’t pick the numbers,” he said.

With just hours to go before Wednesday night’s record-setting lottery drawing, other Angelenos were just as picky.

Marcia Monahan, a nurse from Long Beach, declined an offer to buy my ticket at face value so she could avoid standing at the rear of a slow-moving, 75-person Lotto line at Farmers Market.

She intended to buy a $5 ticket just like mine. “But I’ve got my own numbers,” she said. “They’re numbers that my mom uses every week in Michigan. The numbers are our birthdays and she’s won money with them.”

Pat Walker was in the same line to buy a single $1 ticket. The Anaheim Hills homemaker studied my $5 ticket closely. Then she studied me. “You’ve got a shifty face,” she finally said, turning down my offer to trade my ticket for her greenback.

Secretaries Terryl Martin of Gardena and Jennifer Freeland of West Hollywood had been entrusted with $25 from an office pool to buy tickets at the Farmers Market. They weren’t willing to include my ticket among them.

“It doesn’t look very lucky,” Freeland said skeptically.

Barber George Lebel of Torrance wasted no time declining to take my Lotto ticket in exchange for a fast $10 haircut at his shop.

“It could be a quick $100 million,” I said.

“Aw, what would I do with all that money?” Lebel replied. He confessed that he had purchased $3 worth of tickets from a real Lotto vendor. “There’s a little bit of gambler in everybody,” he laughed.

In Hollywood, Wherehouse record store clerk Conover wouldn’t take my ticket in exchange for either the Johnny Paycheck CD or a $10.99 Kenny Rogers album featuring his song, “The Gambler.” She said she couldn’t gamble on losing her job if her cash register was short at the end of the day.

I told her she probably wouldn’t have to worry about working after obtaining ownership of my sure-fire winning ticket. She shook her head.

“It doesn’t look that lucky to me,” she said, grinning.

At Woody’s Bar-B-Cue takeout joint on Slauson Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles, cashier Regina Cowen wouldn’t swap one of her $6.68 sandwiches for my ticket. “I don’t play,” she said. “I bought a ticket once and didn’t win anything. So I don’t buy them anymore.”

Takeout customer Patricia Coleman turned down a dollar-off offer--five Lotto numbers for the price of four. “Nah. I’m going to buy 10 tickets, but I’m going to use my own numbers based on birthdays, ages and addresses,” she apologized.

On Mission Road in Lincoln Heights, Omar Mosqueda studied my five numbers closely before rejecting my ticket. He said his own lucky Lotto numbers came to him Tuesday night in a dream.

“I woke up and wrote them down,” he said, displaying a crumpled piece of blue paper with “23-43-35-31-56-9 or 67” scribbled on it. In his dream--which ignored the fact that Lotto numbers end at 53--Mosqueda couldn’t remember whether the last number was a 9 or a 67.

Mosqueda, a plumber’s assistant, said he planned to buy a ticket with the correct numbers as soon as he deciphered his dream.

“I’m going to try to figure it out,” he said. “I’m going to go home and take a nap.”

The winning numbers Wednesday were 1, 7, 16, 19, 26 and 53. The bonus number was 52.