Millions Queue Up : Fanfare and Fantasies Launch State’s Lottery

California leaped into the lottery business Thursday. Millions of residents, rich and poor, gambled that they could turn $1 investments in a California jackpot ticket into instant winnings of as much as $5,000 and a shot at a $2-million jackpot.

By design, most lost. “This game is like dollars with wings,” said Jack Gould, a Santa Monica College student. “Your dollars just fly away.”

Action was brisk at many of the 20,000 retail outlets throughout the state that are licensed to sell California State Lottery tickets. At 9 p.m., lottery officials estimated that 10.9 million tickets had already been sold.

The kickoff’s major flaw was that about one out of every five outlets did not have tickets in time for the 12:30 p.m. commencement.

But neither that problem nor record-breaking heat put a damper on lottery fever in San Diego County.

From general stores in backcountry hamlets to corner groceries in downtown San Diego, area residents lined up in queues sometimes 100 long to plunk down a dollar for tickets they hoped to parlay into a $2-million jackpot.

There were winners:

Lottery officials knew by late afternoon of five $5,000 winners in the San Diego area, including Elisa Leal, 46, a mother of three who works at two San Diego convalescent hospitals.

Leal was folding laundry at the Paradise Hills Convalescent Center when a co-worker delivered the five tickets she had requested. She scraped away at a $2 winner and three losing tickets before scoring $5,000 on her final chance.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Leal said, stifling tears as she recounted the moment. “I was so calm, and all my friends were just jumping.”

Leal, who lives in the Paradise Hills area, said she expected to use her winnings to buy a high school class ring for her son and a wedding present for a niece. She also planned to buy a ticket to the Philippines to visit her aging parents, whom she has not seen for two years.

There were Kelly Bennett and her boyfriend, John Harris, 42. The couple was celebrating Bennett’s 25th birthday at the Wellhouse Restaurant in Tierrasanta.

They had bought 185 tickets. On the very last one, they won $5,000. “It was my birthday, and we thought I might be lucky,” said a delighted Bennett. “We bought $50 worth and decided, what the heck, let’s go for it.”

The couple plans to invest the winnings in their jewelry business.

There was Shelby Ojeda, 25, of San Diego. Along with an estimated 1,800 people, Ojeda stood in 92-degree heat on the Broadway Pier at 12:30 p.m., waiting for an official kickoff ceremony to end and ticket sales to begin.

She bought 10 tickets. The seventh was a $100 winner.

“It was worth the $10,” Ojeda said, beaming. “It’s better than the banks’ interest.”

There were losers, too, the first of literally hundreds of millions who will end up with nothing but a worthless ticket and a pile of shavings for their $1 investment in the lottery.

“I’m going to buy me a beer,” said Russell White, 22, after scraping clean a losing ticket at Base Liquor in Logan Heights. “I know that’s guaranteed.”

The lottery came 11 months after it was approved by voters, seven months behind schedule. With its lottery, California became the 21st state in the nation to offer some form of game intended to enhance government revenue while providing a few fortunates with instant wealth. The District of Columbia also has a lottery.

California’s lottery operation is the nation’s largest. Sales of $1.4 billion have been forecast for the first full year. Half of the money is to be returned as winnings; 34% will be distributed to public schools and universities, and the rest is supposed to pay for lottery administration and promotion.

The opening was commemorated with fanfare. In Sacramento, a cannon boomed at the appointed starting time in a downtown mall. Willie Mays provided celebrity for a San Francisco celebration. In San Diego, 1,000 San Diegans stood in 92-degree heat at the Broadway Pier to hear Debra Sue Maffett, Miss America 1983, sing “It’s a Good Feeling,” the official lottery anthem.

And in Los Angeles, a ragtag lottery parade of double-decker buses, vintage cars and a lone unicyclist picked its way through a crunch of lunch-hour traffic. College bands blared away inside the broiling buses, confounding onlookers.

Despite the festivities, some merchants were angry the lottery did not get off as smoothly as had been anticipated.

At the district lottery headquarters in San Diego, there was a gathering of disgruntled lottery vendors whose ticket deliveries had been delayed.

“They’re not ready for this lottery,” said Pete Loussia, manager of Mullen Liquor on Imperial Avenue in San Diego. “They should have delayed another week.”

Loussia and several of the 40 other retailers crowded into the small office anteroom said they had left crowds of expectant ticket buyers behind at their businesses.

“We have people ready to kill us,” Teri Farrell, manager of a 7-Eleven store at 40th Street and Meade Avenue, said as she waited nervously at 11:45 a.m.

Farrell survived the day. Lottery officials finally handed her tickets at about 12:30 p.m. The store sold 3,000 tickets in the next four hours.

Sherman Palmore, a sales representative at the lottery office, said computer malfunctions had interrupted ticket distribution Wednesday afternoon and most of Thursday morning. Officials had no estimate of the number of tickets distributed to the 1,500 lottery retailers in San Diego County.

Most state officials, including Gov. George Deukmejian, who opposed the lottery, refrained from any of the opening day festivities.

Even though the lottery is expected to produce $475 million for state schools annually, politicians and even school officials have questioned the wisdom of bringing another form of large-scale gambling to the state. Horse racing generates more revenue than the lottery is expected to turn out.

Despite all the staged hoopla, the sense that California had embarked on something of a new era could be detected most dramatically in the tiny neighborhood shops and grocery stores, boutiques and convenience markets that had added lottery tickets to their stock.

It was in these outlets that the Californians gathered and sometimes waited in long lines for their first taste of lottery fever. Many found it quite catching. Merchants reported tickets being snapped up by the 100s in minutes.

And demographics seemed not to matter. Business was hopping in exclusive enclaves and in slums.

In wealthy San Marino, the little B.J. Nutrition store sold out its entire of stock of 500 by 2 p.m., and owner B.J. Witz was on the telephone trying to order more. In the meantime, she directed prospective gamblers next door to San Marino Coiffures.

“I thought 500 would last me at least a week,” Witz said. “It was hectic. Everyone wanted a sandwich and a ticket and Vitamin B-1 at the same time, and they all stood around scratching at the numbers.”

In San Ysidro, lottery tickets were selling for 375 pesos at Instant Mexico Auto Insurance Services, less than a mile from the Mexican border. The firm had set aside one of its drive-up windows for lottery sales, but as at other locations near the border, business was slow at mid-afternoon.

Marines from Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base landed in Oceanside after their daily military duties and joined civilian lines at supermarkets and 7-Eleven stores selling the $1 tabs.

The odds against winning $2 on a $1 ticket are 10 to 1. For a $100 payoff, the odds are 4,000 to 1. For $5,000, the maximum prize for the instant scratch-off, the odds against winning are 40,000 to 1.

Only $100 winners are eligible to participate in weekly drawings on a prime-time televised show on which a giant wheel will be spun to award prizes ranging from $10,000 to $2 million. Odds against hitting the ultimate payoff are 25 million to 1.

Despite the long odds, a few players walked away with spectacular winnings. There were 57 winners of $5,000 reported by 5 p.m., officials said.

In San Diego, the lottery kickoff began with Dixieland bands, a trained bear, a former Miss America and the release of 50,000 green and orange balloons at the Broadway Pier.

“It’s a great day for public education in California,” said a smiling Thomas Payzant, San Diego schools superintendent, who with other education officials participated in the festivities.

KFMB radio personalities Mack Hudson and Joe Bauer promised a bonus to the first winner in the crowd. The prize would be worth much more than a million dollars, they promised--”free parking at Horton Plaza.”

Maffett, Miss America 1983, joined with a troupe from San Diego State University to sing the lottery’s official song.

And Trishka, a trained black bear, clambered onto the stage and peeled off jackpot tabs from a giant replica lottery ticket to demonstrate how to play the instant-winner game.

There were shouting matches in the crowd as anxious players pressed forward to buy tickets at 12:30 p.m., but security personnel stepped in before the squabbles could escalate into fights.

Red Cross officials said two people fainted in the midday heat. A clown, performing just days after foot surgery, needed an ambulance ride to his car.

Winners’ stories abounded throughout the state.

“I can’t believe it! Oh, Lord, I can’t believe it!” said Johnnie Mae Kimbrough, who became a $5,000 winner at the Thrifty Drug in Watts. “There are so many people in need. I prayed that if I did get any money, I could help somebody.”

And what did she intend to do with the winnings?

“I’ve got a son in his senior year in high school, and he’s going to college. Then my daughter and her husband are in law school. I helped with the wedding, but I didn’t get a chance to buy them a wedding present.”

Patty Inkapkorn, a 28-year-old Thai immigrant living in Hawthorne, scratched off a $5,000 ticket in the California Commerce Club in Commerce. She works as a dealer at the poker house and had gone there to play poker when she remembered there was a new form of gambling to sample. Her reaction was a scream, and it stopped the serious gambling going on throughout the house.

“Everyone knows her scream,” said Sherry Littleford, assistant manager of the casino. “The whole place jumped up.”

While the game was the same, it seemed to take on a different flavor depending on where it was played. At Lake Tahoe’s Kings Beach, many players--casino veterans--bought in bulk.

In Carmel, diners at a French restaurant waited politely to scratch their tickets after lunch. In a market across from a Watts housing project, the gamblers gathered in droves and rooted each other on.

Paul Po, a bartender in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, instructed patrons in Chinese on how to play the new game, while outside the rattling of firecrackers heralded its arrival.

And in Hollywood, there was the poignant and the peculiar.

At the Community Check Cashing store, located between a clothing store and a Christian Science Reading Room on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame, Charles Noland, 31, who lives on a disability check, waited patiently to buy his tickets.

“I want to set up my own plumbing business,” he said. “I’m going to keep trying until I earn something.” He spent $25 and won $4.

The counters in the store, where many cash their welfare checks, were covered with the silvery paint that people had scraped off their tickets. They were using everything from coins to ballpoint pens to lipstick tubes as scrapers.

There were also computer problems with the state’s maiden voyage into lottery-dom. Lottery officials in several locations around the state complained that computers were often not working, making it impossible for them to process orders.

In Redding, orders to such back country hamlets as Hayfork and Mad River sat undelivered for days. Huge piles of tickets, in some cases, waited on loading docks at metropolitan warehouses as anxious retailers tried to call regional office telephone numbers that were always busy, several vendors complained.

In San Francisco, more computer foul-ups caused retailers to drive in from such outlying areas as Contra Costa County and Marin County to pick up tickets after the 12:30 p.m. start-up time.