Retailers Who Sold the Tickets Get Lucky Too

She doesn’t even have the check yet. But already Margie Bennett, owner of a Montebello 7-Eleven store, is deciding how she and her husband will spend some of the bonus they will collect from Saturday night’s $193-million Lotto jackpot.

“We have a nephew who would love to go to college,” Bennett said. “Then there’s the employees. I got struggling students and a single mom working two jobs.”

Bennett’s store sold one of the three lucky tickets to as-yet-unidentified winners in Saturday night’s SuperLotto Plus drawing. The jackpot was the largest in U.S. history for a lottery that involved just one state.

According to California Lottery rules, retailers who sell winning tickets are entitled to 0.5% of the jackpot, in this case, $965,000.

The Bennetts will get about $321,600, with the rest going to the other two stores that sold winning tickets--one in Orange, one in Half Moon Bay.

That’s a heck of a lot of cash, Bennett said as she worked the store counter Sunday. “I’m just at a loss for words.”

In Orange, 7-Eleven store clerk Devinder Singh tried to man his counter but was interrupted repeatedly by visiting reporters.

The winning numbers--6, 11, 31, 32, 39 and Mega Number 20--were drawn just before 8 p.m. Saturday, but it may be Tuesday before the winners come forward, since Lotto offices are closed today, officials said.

But in Montebello, the celebration already had begun. “Everybody in Montebello already knows” who sold one of the winning tickets, said Margie Bennett’s husband, Byron, who was passing out free coffee and doughnuts.

“You just work, work, work,” said Margie Bennett, who says she has been at the store nearly every day since the couple bought it 18 years ago.

“And in between you take care of your kids, and you just never think it will happen to you,” she said.

Bennett said the bulk of the cash award will probably go to her daughters, both of whom will be heading off to college in a few years.

No word yet from the store owner in Orange on how he’ll spend his windfall.

California Lottery spokeswoman Nora Minas said officials tried to notify Harry Biasala at his store Sunday morning, but employees said he was on vacation--somewhere in Las Vegas.

“It’s pretty ironic, don’t you think?” Minas said. “The jackpot is here in California and he’s in Las Vegas.”

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Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this report.