Sacramento residents flood ‘lucky Lichine’s’ as Powerball jackpot reaches $1 billion
Wednesday was Beverley Beeks-Johnson’s birthday. Her wish? To win a billion dollars.
Beeks-Johnson and her daughter, Toi Johnson, are two of many Sacramento locals with dreams of winning big who lined up at Lichine’s Liquor & Deli clutching cash to buy tickets for the night’s $1 billion Powerball lottery drawing ($516.8 million cash value, when taken as a lump sum).
For years, Lichine’s on South Land Park Drive has been considered a lucky spot for the lottery, boasting many winners and, when the jackpot numbers creep up, often a long line stretching out the doors. The shop sold a winning Powerball ticket worth more than $1.6 million in November, and has sold at least three other multi-million dollar lottery tickets since 2000.
Beeks-Johnson said that she came to the location to buy her ticket because she knew that “a lot of people come here if they want to win big.”
And Wednesday night’s Powerball jackpot is certainly big — this is only the third time in the Powerball’s 31 years that the jackpot has crossed the billion-dollar threshold, with the last one being a $2.04 billion prize claimed in November 2022. Although between taxes and cash payout logistics the winner won’t quite become an instant billionaire, they’d still be going home with hundreds of millions of dollars.
The mother-daughter duo said that if either of them win, they want to buy a farm and adopt shelter dogs and cats, as well as giving back to close friends.
“I have a lot of people on my ‘bless list’ that I’d like to bless,” Beeks-Johnson said.
They won’t have to wait long to find out if they’ve beat the one to 292.2 million odds; the cutoff for buying the $2 Powerball tickets for tonight’s drawing in California is 7 p.m. Pacific, and the drawing will take place at 7:59 p.m.
The drawing will be broadcast live on the lottery website, and players can also check their numbers afterward on the Powerball website by entering the date range of their drawing and their numbers.
Regardless of who wins, some of the money raised through ticket sales will go toward funding California public schools, including kindergartens, high schools, community colleges and public universities. Use of the funding by schools is “largely discretionary,” according to the California Lottery, allowing them to use the money for otherwise unfunded instructional programs.
Some of the locals who flooded Lichine’s on Wednesday were lottery regulars, while others were tempted by the jackpot for the first time.
But in the words of one player, Tammy Straling, all of them were motivated by one thing:
“The lottery dream.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2023 at 2:46 PM.