DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9709020131

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELLEN NAKASHIMA, THE WASHINGTON POST 

DATELINE: HALIFAX                           LENGTH:   53 lines

SMALL TOWN ABUZZ WITH WONDER OVER LOTTO WINNER'S IDENTITY

It's the No. 1 question

in this community of 800 residents on the North Carolina border.

Figuring out who might have hit Virginia's $26.2 million lottery jackpot from this rural Southside community has become something of a whodunit.

It's the No. 1 question at the coffee shop, the barbershop and even the county jail here.

Whoever it is - assuming it is a local person who bought the lone winning ticket in last Wednesday's drawing - will instantly vault into the stratosphere of the rich and famous in this community of tobacco farmers and textile workers on the North Carolina border. And that person will have the distinction of nailing the largest Virginia jackpot won on a single ticket.

``I could make it on that,'' said mill worker Harold Adams, 59, sitting in Maxwell's Barber Shop, where you can still get a shave for $5 and a shower for $2. ``There's a lotta people mad 'cause they didn't win.''

Mickey Wheeler, 43, a burly county jail inmate, said as he took a smoking break from painting the county courthouse: ``I'd buy me a little island somewhere. I'd make a resort and make money. Somewhere in the Caribbean.''

The winning ticket was sold at Farmer's Foods supermarket in Halifax, which has 800 residents and extends a mile from the railroad tracks at one end to the Jiffy Store at the other. The town is in the county of the same name, whose 30,000 residents have a median household income of $30,000. The annual prize payment alone - $892,000 - is one-third larger than the town's budget.

It's been fun for folks to speculate on who the winner might be: a nurse at the regional hospital; a worker at the Burlington textile mill.

The local newspaper reporter spent the last couple of days trying to track down the lucky person.

``We were sort of looking for a party, a celebration, but we didn't find it,'' said Doug Loftis, reporter, editor and layout person for the thrice-a-week Gazette-Virginian. ``This is real big stuff. Everybody wants to know who it is.''

``I hear the girl who lives right above me won it,'' said retired mill worker Charlie Vaughan, 68.

The winning ticket, purchased for $1 between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, likely was bought by a local person, said Linda Edmonds, Farmer's assistant manager. Because of the size of the prize, the store was selling double the usual number of tickets the night of the drawing, ``but most of the customers that came in here were regular local customers,'' she said.

The winner could not claim the prize before today, when the Virginia Lottery office reopens after the Labor Day holiday. KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA LOTTERY

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