Lotto fever strikes
Thursday, November 09, 2006 posted 02:28 AM EST
Lottery fever was boiling in Kelowna on Wednesday as thousands crossed their fingers, closed their eyes and wished themselves luck in the draw for the third-largest jackpot in Lotto 6/49 history.
John Shelton was run off his feet all day at Capri Centre mall.
Business was non-stop as the lottery booth owner punched in ticket orders or scanned lottery cards, all the while greeting familiar faces and joking with strangers.
“We’ve been going like crazy since Monday, but even Sunday was busy,” he said during a 30-second break.
“I usually work the draw days: BC49 and 6/49 on Wednesdays, PayDay on Thursdays, Super 7 on Fridays, and BC49 and 6/49 on Saturdays, because those are our busiest days,” he said.
“That way, if anyone makes a mistake, it’s going to be me,” he joked.
Shelton said he gets mostly seniors at his booth, “and they have a tendency to choose their numbers. I’ve sold lots of winners, four over $10,000 during the past year, year-and-a-half.”
Asked what he would do if he won the $36 million, he said: “I have no idea, none whatsoever.”
Rae Nagy, manager of the Orchard Park mall lottery kiosk, said she, too, was busy for the three days leading up to the draw.
“With the official opening of the new stores today, we were surrounded,” she said. “When the prize is bigger like this, people buy more tickets and more people are picking their own numbers.”
And what would she buy with $36 million? “Anything I want,” she responded with a laugh.
Eileen Fazan looked through Luck magazine and found a list of numbers most frequently drawn in lotteries.
“If I won, I would buy the most beautiful powered wheelchair and I’d travel, taking all of my friends.”
“I’d pay all my kids to go away,” joked Jean Bekker, “and I’d pay my grandchildren to go away with their mothers.”
She still remembers going to a Kelowna store with her five children 20 years ago, promising to buy them a treat if they stayed in the car while she bought a lottery ticket.
The numbers just popped into her head and she wrote them at the top of her grocery list.
“They wouldn’t stay in the car, so I didn’t buy the ticket. When I came back, the machine was shut down for the draw. When I went in the next day, I asked Linda: ‘Why did you put my numbers up there?’ ‘They can’t be,’ she said. ‘Those are the winning numbers for the $2 million,’” said Bekker.
“I was shocked to see all those numbers, so I showed her the piece of paper. I kept that piece of paper for a long time. I guess my five kids wanted to keep me at home.”
Then, there are the sad stories.
Char, who declined to provide her last name, would buy “a nice piece of property in southern Illinois” where she and her two best friends from the U.S. could live together. Her friend from Florida has inoperable cancer.
“We would all go on a nice cruise, spend some quality time together. It would be a surprise for them.”
Cap Rieger checked a number of previous lottery slips and won $2. He then spent another $8 to buy more.
“I quite often win; one week $100 and some,” he said, adding with a laugh: “I tell you, I spend more than I win.”
Even though he is 85, “I could spend that $36 million in a week if I gave it all away. I’ll be giving it to my kids, two boys and a daughter.”
Dick Smith, director of public affairs and corporate social responsibility for B.C. Lottery Corp., admitted the top prize could exceed $36 million, since that is a conservative estimate of the jackpot at game time.
If no one wins, it would be added to Saturday’s draw and could be close, perhaps exceed, the record $54-million Lotto 6/49 draw won by 17 oil company workers in Camrose, Alta., in October 2005.
The odds of winning the $36 million: one in just under 14 million. Chances of winning something: one in 32.
Those are posted on www.bclc.com under the Lotteries tab.
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