Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990 TAG: 9007210226
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The usual number for that day of the week is 200,000.
Thursday, Nancy Sayers drove 30 miles from Princeton, W.Va., to Ron Holdren's Stop and Shop near Pembroke in Giles County.
There, she bought 10 chances on Virginia's Lotto game - the jackpot had swollen to $21 million, which would give the winner after-tax income of $798,000 annually for 20 years.
Sayers said she was a little embarrassed to find a reporter in the store. She said she came to Pembroke in the hope of not being seen buying lottery tickets.
Sayers, who lives in Northern Virginia, was visiting in-laws in Princeton. She had voted against the lottery.
And Sayers said she would "make some loving dreams come true" if she wins the jackpot.
She said she would send one of her daughters to graduate school "without any headaches."
There is a grandson, she said, and she would set up a "big, Kennedy-style trust fund" for him.
If she wins big, she said, "I trust it wouldn't change my values."
At the 7-Day Market in Pearisburg, nine members of a pool had just invested $280 in Lotto, said owner Wayne Gentry.
Last Saturday, Gentry said, the store sold 1,000 tickets. He said he expects to double that number today.
This is big money for the Virginia lottery.
Outlets in Western Virginia report that out-of-state Lotto players from West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee are coming in large numbers to play the game.
Lottery officials are very happy and keep saying things like "lottery fever."
On Saturdays, Ron Holdren said, "it gets out of control here."
Last Saturday, he said, his daily customer count was up 600. He sold 4,000 tickets. The jackpot was then up to $11 million.
The action will be fast again today, he said.
These are serious gamblers, Holdren said, who buy scratch-off tickets while waiting for the computer to record their Lotto numbers.
There was the West Virginian who learned his state's multistate jackpot of $35 million had been won by someone in the Midwest.
Holdren said that man spent $3 on a West Virginia jackpot, then reduced to $2 million, and brought $17 across the line to play Virginia Lotto.
All outlets say that today will be a big day for sales.
It has been fast all week at Milan's, a downtown Roanoke tobacco shop.
Milan's is a top seller to downtown office workers in normal times. This week they have been forming pools to buy as much as $250 worth of tickets.
Ellis Milan said the store usually sells 800 to 1,000 tickets a day. It has been running close to 2,500 a day this week.
At George and Sid's convenience store in the Virginia city of Bristol - a natural place for lotteryless Tennesseans to bet - the action started in midweek.
Friday and Saturday are usually big days, Karen Morrell said on Thursday, "But it started today."
Last Saturday, she said, the store sold 11,000 tickets.
Although Tennessee has an anti-lottery law, it appears that a Tennessean who won the Virginia lottery would be in no trouble.
A 1988 attorney general's opinion says that it is lawful for a Tennessean to buy a lottery ticket in Virginia "to the extent is it permissible under Virginia law."
North Carolinians have been coming in increasing numbers to Ed's Stop and Go store in Danville.
Owner Ed Gregory said the store sold 38,000 tickets last Saturday when the jackpot was at $11 million.
Gregory also said he was expecting big crowds today. It will, he said, "get kind of tight at times."
There are a "lot of new faces" in the crowds, he said - many of them driving 30 or 40 miles out of North Carolina to buy tickets.
Possession of a lottery ticket in North Carolina is against the law.
But, again, it is doubtful that an individual player would be charged, said David Hoke of the attorney general's office.
With a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $2,000 fine, a North Carolina Lotto winner could probably laugh all the way to jail.
Hoke said that criminal organizations that bought large amounts of tickets in Virginia and sold them for more money in North Carolina would get into trouble quickly.
State law, he said, allows for confiscation of winnings in such cases.
Lottery spokesman Paula Otto was asked about the pools that have been spending Lotto money.
She said she would advise pool members to have a written agreement on details of splitting the jackpot.
She said, though, that a pool that recently won a much smaller jackpot didn't have such an agreement and there was no trouble.
In that case, she said, the pool member who bought the tickets gave each other member a copy of the tickets.
Lotto tickets should be signed by somebody, the department has said before, because they are a "bearer instrument" - which means that anybody who finds an unsigned ticket can sign it and collect the money.
by CNB