BUENA PARK : Lucky Winner’s Dream Came True
This has been a lucky month for Gregory Roth.
It started with a winning weekend in Las Vegas. Then, last week, Roth spun the “wheel of fortune” at the Buena Park BMW dealership, where he is a salesman, and landed on the $1,000 spot, taking home the largest bonus available.
And Wednesday, the 38-year-old Roth won a share in the Super Lotto’s $31-million jackpot.
“I’ve been feeling lucky for about 30 days,” Roth said Friday, recounting his vivid dreams about winning big money each night for a week before he hit his numbers. “Everything’s just been going great; nothing’s been going wrong.”
Roth, who plays the lottery only when the grand prize passes the $30-million mark, predicted to his wife, co-workers and even the woman who sold him the winning ticket that he was going to win Wednesday.
On his way to work that afternoon, he stopped by the 7-Eleven store at the corner of Orangethorpe Avenue and Manchester Boulevard in Buena Park and bought $80 worth of Quick Pick tickets, letting the computer decide his fate.
“The guy behind me kept poking me. He said, “You’re going to win,’ ” Roth, who lives in Torrance, recalled at a press conference with the other big winners Friday.
At work that afternoon, Roth told his partner at Shelly BMW that he might never again attend a manager’s meeting, flipping through the wad of lotto tickets for effect.
A few hours later, he returned to the 7-Eleven to find out the winning numbers, then casually sat at his desk looking through his tickets.
“I went through about four or five tickets, and I kept having the same numbers in different areas,” Roth recalled, shaking a bit as he relived the nerve-racking moment. “I got to the bottom line and the numbers were the same and it just didn’t seem real.”
But real it was.
Roth and his wife, Anna, will split his $15.5 million with a close friend, Suzanne (Nancy) Hyun, who funded half the lotto binge.
Alexander Shats and his daughter, Zinaida Kleyman, Ukrainian immigrants who live in North Hollywood, also cooperated for their winning ticket, one of 15 that Shats bought at a Los Angeles liquor store as part of a weekly ritual.
Each of the winners will get annual checks of $314,000 after the federal government takes 20% off the top in taxes.
Roth said he is not sure what he will do with the money, besides buy a new house and car for his mother, who lives in Pennsylvania, and bring his wife’s family for a visit from Korea in December, when the couple are expecting their first child.
Roth said he has already given notice at Shelly BMW--where his annual income hit six figures--but his wife said she is not sure whether she will give up her job as a dealer at a Gardena casino.
The next time the jackpot reaches $30 million, Roth said, he will be back in line buying lottery tickets, and he fully expects his luck to continue.
“I’ve also had dreams about the Publisher’s Clearinghouse,” he said. “I’m going to win that too.”
