This $1-Million Jackpot Required Sales Pitch First

A Placentia couple out for a night on the town came home wealthy.

Retired salesman Tom Simanton and his wife, Victoria, won more than $1 million at Casino Morongo, making it the largest jackpot in the Indian casino’s 17-year history.

“It’s still hard to believe,” Victoria said of the $1,045,906.45 jackpot.

She said her husband suggested Friday that they spend the evening at the casino near Banning, about 70 miles from their Orange County home. “I was very tired, and he really had to persuade me to go,” she recalled Monday. “I guess he was a really good salesman.”

At 4:30 a.m. Saturday, Tom was playing $3 slot machines when suddenly, Victoria said, “there was this huge yell, and all I heard him say was, ‘I got it!’ The next thing we knew, we were roped off and they had security guards all over us.”

The couple plan to use some of the money for a vacation to Italy and invest the rest. “We don’t need anything,” she said. “Nothing will change radically except that there’ll be a lot less stress. It will just be there for emergencies and for when we get older and to spoil the kids more.”

Waltona Manion, a consultant for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, which operates the casino, said the tribe is pleased “because Tom and his wife are making history and so is the casino. We’re ecstatic for them.”