As jackpot peaks, Sacramentans line up for lottery tickets at the city’s ‘luckiest’ store
As the Mega Millions jackpot swelled to $810 million, Sacramentans tried their hand Monday at Lichine’s Liquor and Deli, the South Land Park store that has been dubbed the “luckiest” in the Sacramento area.
When numbers are drawn Tuesday night, a Mega Millions lottery ticket could pay off with the fourth-largest jackpot in the country. On Monday afternoon, new and returning lottery players lined up at Lichine’s, which sold a winning Powerball ticket worth more than $1.6 million this November.
“Whenever the Mega is really big like that, there’s always going to be lines here,” said Ron Castillo, who came to Lichine’s on Monday to purchase scratchers. “It’s a really lucky store.”
Tony Lo, a cashier at Lichine’s, pointed to the pictures of winning lottery tickets Lichine has sold as evidence that the store is particularly lucky.
“It’s been like this for the last couple of days,” Lo said. “They just keep coming.”
As Tuesday night’s drawing grows closer, demand will only increase, Lo said. He added that the lines usually extend out the door when the jackpot rises this high.
Miriam Edwards said she does not usually buy at Lichine’s because she could be “superstitious” about where her weekly lottery ticket is purchased from, but drove to the location after a grocery store cashier told her that it was luckier than any other store in the area.
“You say a prayer, and then you have this lady come to you and tell you which game she’s played,” Edwards said. “I told her I never get lucky at Safeway, so she said, ‘No, try this one,’ and sent me off here.”
Yolanda Peña said she always goes out of her way to buy tickets at Lichine’s, regardless of the size of the jackpot.
“I kind of win a lot,” Peña said. “Scratchers — not much, but I’m waiting for the big one.”
Playing the odds
But is a dream chance at winning it all worth the $2 ticket?
To start with, your chance of winning the grand prize is minuscule, at one in 302.5 million. You have better odds of a smaller payoff, such as winning $1 million for matching five regular numbers but missing the Mega Ball. But even that is one in 12.6 million. To put that in perspective, your chance of dying in a car crash — something to consider as you drive to the mini-mart for a lottery ticket – is around one in 101 over a lifetime, according to the nonprofit National Safety Council.
As lottery officials note, players should think of their $2 bet as a chance to dream while accepting the reality they likely won’t be entering a new income tax bracket Tuesday night.
Even if you somehow beat the odds, you are not going to get $810 million.
First, that’s the amount for winners who take the annuity option, paid over 30 annual payments. But winners nearly always opt for cash, which for this drawing would pay out an estimated $470.1 million.
And then there are federal taxes, which will slice 37% off that cash prize, so that would leave less than $300 million, though state taxes could cut into that amount as well, depending on where the winner lives. Still a fortune, but a smaller fortune. That also doesn’t account for the possibility that someone else will match the winning numbers, meaning they would need to divide even those smaller winnings in half or more, depending on the number of lucky players.
Nearly $300 million isn’t chump change: It is definitely a big paycheck.
To put that in perspective, consider that the median U.S. household income in 2020 was $67,500, meaning a lifetime of work at that rate would be less than 1% of even the smaller jackpot after taxes.
But, sadly, if you had won that same prize a year ago, before the nation endured a year with an inflation rate of about 9%, your buying power would have been significantly higher.
But someone will win eventually, although the reason the grand prize has grown so large is because no one has matched all six numbers since April. That’s 28 consecutive drawings without someone hitting the jackpot.
This story was originally published July 25, 2022 at 3:15 PM.