Clock Ticks Down to Zero for $25-Million Lotto Ticket

Rummaging through coat pockets, purses and automobile glove compartments, lottery players in West Los Angeles made a frantic last-minute search Thursday for a $25-million winning ticket that expired at midnight.

The missing Lotto ticket was purchased at a 7-Eleven store at 11656 Wilshire Blvd. for the Jan. 8 drawing. Unclaimed for 180 days, the ticket was set to automatically expire at midnight--making it what officials said would be the largest unpaid lottery jackpot in California history.

Money from unclaimed Lotto prizes goes directly to public education. Since 1987, more than $100 million from 12 unclaimed jackpots has been funneled there.

But Westside Lotto players were anxious to avoid making that kind of personal school contribution Thursday afternoon. And as the minutes ticked by, some were desperate.

“I threw away a whole bunch of tickets from earlier this year! I’m freaking out!” shouted one man who declined to give his name as he hurried from the store with a list of January’s winning numbers--49-14-25-32-46-34.

“Can they identify the winner from the store video surveillance tape? Can somebody tell me?”

The answer to that question is no, said California Lottery officials in Sacramento.

The quality of store surveillance tapes is usually too poor to show numbers on lottery tickets. And most stores record over their old tapes after a few weeks, officials said. But lottery players who think they have lost their winning jackpot ticket can file a claim and try to prove that they bought it at a certain time and place. Officials would then review Lotto computer files to verify those claims.

Store manager Ralph Berg guessed that someone lured into playing the lottery because of the huge Jan. 8 jackpot walked away with the winning ticket and forgot about it. His own corps of weekly lottery customers would never be so careless as to forget to check to see if they’d won, he said.

“Eighty percent of the tickets we sell are bought by regular customers. My personal theory is that the winner is somebody who doesn’t play on a weekly basis, somebody who just purchased a ticket on a whim because the amount was so high.”

Word of the approaching deadline had Berg’s regulars digging through envelopes stuffed with old tickets just to see if they were lucky and didn’t know it.

“The winner probably died,” surmised Vis Ansbergs, an Army master sergeant from Point Mugu who works at a Westside military office. He was wearing his green camouflage fatigues as he stood outside the store.

“I play. I come here on a regular basis. But I always check the numbers. On Jan. 8th I bought my tickets in Oxnard and I checked them after the drawing. I wouldn’t be wearing this uniform if I’d won.”

Brentwood hotel worker Ron Teague came to get a copy of the winning numbers for his roommate.

“I’m going to go check for him. He buys tickets then throws them in the back of the car,” Teague said. “If he wins, we’ll split the money.”

Lotto player Beatrice Silverberg said she would never want to know if she turned out to be the owner of a lottery ticket that expired before its $25 million was claimed. But she didn’t have to worry this time.

“I only buy tickets here when I come down here for dental appointments. I checked. My last appointment was in February, not January,” said Silverberg, a department store clerk from Sherman Oaks.

California Lottery offices closed at 5 p.m. But officials said the holder of the missing ticket could have it validated Thursday night at any lottery retailer through midnight.

The latest any previous big winner ever waited to claim a prize was six days before the deadline. That was in late 1998, when Fullerton resident Juanita Sutton turned in a $4-million ticket, said Lottery spokeswoman Norma Minas.

One man called Lottery officials Thursday to ask how a relative in Japan might redeem the winning ticket if he had it with him there, Minas said. “We said fax it to us . . . we’ll do everything possible to pay a winner.”

As the deadline neared, it seemed as though there would be only one winner: Berg’s convenience store. For selling the winning ticket, it received a $125,000 bonus. Half went to the 7-Eleven corporate headquarters. The rest went to Berg and his father, store owner Dwight Berg.

Their winnings are already spent, Ralph Berg said. “We reinvested it back in the business,” he said.