Store Owner’s Lucky Homecoming

Convenience-store owner Harry Bisla spent the weekend in Las Vegas celebrating his son’s birthday, but he isn’t a gambling man and didn’t bet a dime. But when the 61-year-old Orange resident returned home Sunday evening, he learned he had made a tidy sum all the same.

A message on the answering machine from the manager of Bisla’s 7-Eleven store in Orange said one of three winning lottery tickets for California’s record-breaking $193-million jackpot had been sold there. Each ticket, bearing the numbers 6, 11, 31, 32 and 39 and the mega number 20, is worth $64.3 million. And each retailer will receive one-half of 1% of the jackpot share, or about $321,666.

A little more than half of the money will go to the store’s parent company.

Bisla, busy at work Monday at another 7-Eleven franchise he owns in Huntington Beach, said he hasn’t decided what to do with the remainder.

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t thought about that yet,” he said. “I’m just trying to get a lot of paperwork done. I’ve been away for three days.”

The holder of the winning ticket sold at Bisla’s 7-Eleven and of one sold in Montebello remained unknown Monday evening.

According to the Associated Press, a regular customer at an Albertson’s in Half Moon Bay, Andy Kampe, said he was one of the winners of Saturday’s drawing, had his ticket validated and picked up claim forms.

Attempts to reach lottery officials were unsuccessful Monday. Because lottery offices were closed Monday for Presidents Day, winners would have to wait until today to present their tickets and claim their prizes.

Bisla said he spent part of Monday at the Orange store, along with a crush of media and curious bystanders, in hopes of learning who the lucky winner is. “A lot of people are still there,” he said. “But I gave up.”