Couple’s String of Erratic Luck Ends Tragically : $1 million lottery win had seemed to reverse merchants’ misfortune of thefts, sickness and poor business. But the woes continued, and on Friday, Sue Lee was slain.

When their million-dollar California Lottery win came in 1992, it looked like a string of bad luck was finally over for John and Chong S. Lee.

During the previous two years, John had had two major strokes, business at the couple’s Gardena liquor store had been slow, and much of their life’s savings had been depleted by an embezzler.

Finally, the couple figured, they had some financial security.

But that lottery prize was the last good luck they would see for the next two years. Crime would plague their store; John’s health problems would sap their lottery winnings; they would lose their Redondo Beach home.

Then on Friday the 60-year-old Chong S. “Sue” Lee was killed in an apparent armed robbery at their Western Avenue store.

Shortly after the shootings, Gardena police arrested four juveniles as possible suspects, but later determined they had nothing to do with the killing. Police have vague descriptions of two teenagers who are prime suspects.

Neighbors and customers painted a portrait of a tough woman, who, once she got to know you, was quick to be kind. It was one last act of kindness that may have cost Sue Lee her life. Knowing that Juan Baez, who runs an upholstery shop a block away on Western, had several children, she sent her husband to give him a bag of oranges. When John Lee returned 20 minutes later, his wife was dead.

“Those oranges,” her tearful husband said at his Torrance residence Tuesday. “If it wasn’t for those oranges, I would have been there. Sue didn’t know how to shoot; I did. I was in the service for 15 years. I practiced every month.”

John Lee, a veteran of the South Korean army, had worried about raising their two children in that country, where war was a constant threat, so he moved his family to California in 1971.

Sue Lee “didn’t want to come here,” said her daughter, Sumi, 34. “We had a nice life there.”

The couple at first owned stores in South-Central Los Angeles and Long Beach, but bought Casino Liquor in Gardena in 1988, feeling that that was a safer place.

The couple’s uncanny string of personal calamity began in 1990 when John Lee suffered a major stroke and, six months later, a second one. While their medical bills soared, a con man embezzled much of their savings.

Then the couple won $1 million in a special promotional lottery game. Even so, they continued working in the store to pay off medical bills and rebuild their savings.

Shortly afterward, two men beat and robbed John Lee in the store, adding to his medical problems--and his bills. The experience persuaded him to buy a gun, which he used in 1993 when a gunman attempted another store robbery. Lee shot the teenager in the shoulder.

“I was tired of all the pain I was going through from the strokes, and I didn’t care if I died right then,” he said. “I felt he was going to kill me anyway.”

As business slowed and debts mounted, the couple, in need of some quicker cash than the lottery’s 20-year payoff plan allowed, sold the ticket to an insurance company for 40% of its value. Since they had already cashed some of it, they ended up with a little more than $200,000 after taxes.

It wasn’t enough. Their house went into foreclosure last year.

Despite her financial problems, Sue Lee always felt able to help others, friends and neighbors said. In front of the liquor store, customers and fellow merchants have erected a makeshift memorial to the slain owner: candles, dozens of bouquets of flowers and a banner with scores of farewells.

At a nearby trailer park, a group of residents who had frequented the store gathered and fondly remembered Sue Lee.

Jody Jordan said Sue had been instrumental in getting Jordan and her husband back together after a breakup. “It will always stick with me,” she said, “the way she held my hand and said we needed to get back together for the sake of our child. We have to try and make it work. Since then, we have been together.”

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Jennifer Calidonna, 13, recalled the many times she had been short of money for her purchases. Calidonna said, “She would just tell me to bring it in the next time.”

Three days before she was killed, Sue and John and another couple celebrated her 60th birthday at Shilla, a Korean restaurant across the street from the liquor store. “Things are real sad now,” said Mia Woo, the restaurant’s manager. “She was so nice. It was a lot of little things she did, like telling kids not to buy soda pop, buy orange juice instead.”

Rick Creighton, a cook at Ray’s Place a block away, said, “I walked over after hearing the sirens, and there was John crying. I asked him what happened and he said Sue was gone. I started crying too. That lady was real special. She had a real tender heart.”