Lotteries California

During his 25 years of marriage, Thomas Rossi never saw a marriage counselor, never strayed and never doubted a relationship so close that he shared an electric toothbrush with his wife, he said. Then Denise Rossi shocked him by demanding a divorce. And she wanted it in a hurry. Now he knows why: On Dec. 28, 1996--just 11 days before she filed for divorce--Denise Rossi won $1.3 million in the California Lottery. She told no one in her divorce case, and Monday her secret caught up with her.

The first lottery ticket Lawrence Fiore ever bought cost a dollar and brought him $29 in winnings. Several years and hundreds of tries later, the Oak Park resident cashed in his second winning ticket--for $19.8 million. It is the biggest take in Ventura County history. Pulling up in a white, gold-trimmed stretch limo at the California Lottery's Ventura District Office on Friday afternoon, Fiore claimed his prize.

Several days after Hurricane Hugo ripped through Charleston, AT&T rushed a production crew there to film a promotional video. Originally, the video was supposed to be seen only by AT&T employees--as a way to show team spirit during a crisis. But the film footage of the devastation aftermath was so graphic, and in the case of one misty-eyed AT&T supervisor, so heart tugging, that the company took a different path.

The California Lottery allowed the sale of millions of dollars worth of tickets for its most popular lottery games even after all the top prizes had been awarded and purchasers had no chance of winning them, according to court documents.

Salvador J. Gonzalez tossed and turned in a tangle of bed sheets as his wife lay asleep. He was keeping it all inside. Only his brother-in-law knew how Gonzalez's humble life in this three-bedroom house would soon, and very suddenly, be rearranged into something far more complicated. "I have a problem," he said into the dark. "What is wrong?" his wife, Socorro, asked. He paused to measure his words. "I won the lottery."

The California Lottery Commission has started a four-month trial run of selling Lotto 6/49 tickets from do-it-yourself vending machines that work like automated bank tellers. Ten of the new sales devices have been placed in Los Angeles and 90 in Sacramento and Stockton. "The goal is to have Lotto outlets in high-volume locations like supermarkets and eventually airports," commission spokesman Robert Taylor explained.

There were two winning tickets in Saturday's Super Lotto jackpot. Luckily for Garland Whitaker, he had them both. Whitaker, 54, thought he ordered his two regular sets of numbers this week, but accidentally ended up with a matched pair. So he will split the $17.8 million prize--with himself.

Imagine accomplishing a feat that was so difficult the odds against your success were 1,000 to 1. And then the next day, you are told to do it again. What would be your odds of doing it two days in a row? Since 1,000 squared is 1 million, the odds of succeeding would be 1 million to 1. But staggering as that may seem, that's a lot better odds than picking the winning numbers for today's jackpot in the California lottery. The odds against having a winning ticket are nearly 23 million to 1.

A Laguna Niguel woman who claims she was coerced into signing over $12.4 million in California lottery winnings to her son and daughter-in-law probably will lose her case at trial, a judge said Friday. Orange County Superior Court Judge Dennis Keough was ruling on Joan F. Markham's request that he freeze monthly payments to her son and daughter-in-law that amount to $631,000 a year for 20 years. To do that, Keough said, he first had to decide whether it was likely she ultimately would win.

A Canoga Park machinist won $1 million in the Big Spin game on Saturday, California Lottery officials said. Ruben Garcia, 37, who also is an aspiring musician, said he plans to use the winnings to help his small record company, Close Tolerance Music. He said the label specializes in music ranging from classical avant-garde to New Age. "It's for real," an excited Garcia said of his lottery win. "It's something I really wanted to happen for my music."

The California Lottery allowed the sale of millions of dollars worth of tickets for its most popular lottery games even after all the top prizes had been awarded and purchasers had no chance of winning them, according to court documents.

A general contractor from Van Nuys whose family has won a dozen lottery prizes in the last 16 years hit the big time Monday when he collected $14.9 million. Moshe Bar and his wife, Zvia, collected their share of the SuperLotto Plus $88-million jackpot. Before now, Bar and his wife had won about $27,000 in the lottery. He believes he can keep his winning streak alive and he plans to keep playing. When asked what he planned to do with the money, Bar said, "Education for my children . . .

Two San Bernardino County postal workers who bought a lottery ticket while visiting San Diego won the $57-million jackpot in Wednesday night's California lottery drawing. The two friends, Ross Larsen and Rusty Cummings of Rialto, said they will quit their night shift jobs at a post office processing center. "Hey, let someone else work the graveyard shift," Cummings said, laughing, at a news conference Thursday. The two men chose the cash-value option on the ticket, making it worth $28.5 million.

Alcario and Carmen Castellano, California's newest mega-millionaire lottery winners, finally came out of seclusion Friday, staging a news conference on the covered patio of an elegant old downtown hotel they can probably now afford to buy. The graying grandparents, who have long been active in Latino affairs in the San Jose area, hugged affectionately in front of the cameras and talked mostly not about money, but about the importance of family, true romance and giving back to the community.

The winner of one of the largest single-state jackpots in U.S. history has finally come forward to claim the $141-million prize, state lottery officials said Thursday night. Cario Castellano of San Jose arrived at the lottery's San Francisco district office late Thursday afternoon with the winning ticket. Despite a media blitz when the winning numbers were announced, no one immediately stepped forward. On Monday, lottery officials in Sacramento waited in vain for the winner to emerge.

This much lottery officials know: The winner of one of the largest single-state jackpots in U.S. history is out there. Somewhere. They know that a single ticket with all six winning numbers was purchased at a San Jose liquor store, making owner Alex Wang the overjoyed recipient of more than $700,000--the vendor's portion of the big lottery payout.

The owner of the small San Jose liquor store where Saturday's winning Lotto ticket was bought basked in unexpected attention Sunday--although the winner of the largest single-state jackpot in U.S. history had not surfaced. Alex Wang will receive about $705,000--or half of 1% of the total jackpot--if the winning ticket is confirmed, according to lottery officials.

They mounted a historic run on liquor and grocery stores Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Californians taking their one-dollar swipes at over-the-counter bliss while picking up, eh, maybe a Twix and some Chiclets. The state's record lottery jackpot of $141 million had people snapping up 50,000 tickets a minute. They culled their numbers from fortune cookies and astrological charts and odd rituals that had one commodities broker from L.A. asking "the prettiest girl in the room" for her age.

Folks have been a bit scatterbrained about lotteries lately. Maybe $125 million will be enough to hold their attention this time. California Lottery officials said Thursday that the SuperLotto Plus jackpot will be worth that much for Saturday's drawing, the largest in the lottery's 16-year history. No one in California has won a jackpot--which requires an exact match of five numbers, plus the sixth "mega" number--since May 19. The prize has "rolled over" nine times since that $25-million win.

As it turns out, there's something to be said for being in a rut. When Frank Armenta bought his twice-weekly SuperLotto ticket last week, he noticed it was checked for a lump-sum payment. The Santa Ana resident always bought tickets for payments over 26 years. Always Quick Pick, computer-generated numbers. A creature of habit, he made the clerk at the Chevron Food Mart in Tustin take it back and issue a new ticket. New numbers.