Lotto fever rises as jackpot grows

They weren’t there for the doughnuts.

Even with the delicious scent of fried dough filling the air inside the Donut Tyme shop in Riverside’s Canyon Crest Towne Center, most customers breezed right past the display cases filled with maple bars, shiny glazed donuts, apple fritters and muffins. They headed for the lottery machine.

By 1 p.m., Tuesday, July 5, the MEGA Millions jackpot was more than $440 million – the seventh largest in history – and people such as Mike Corona, 44, of Riverside, wanted in on the action.

The wiing Mega Millions numbers, drawn Tuesday night, are white balls 29-64-46-53-73 and yellow ball 10. The lottery consortium that runs the game said they may not know whether there is a wier until about 10 p.m. pacific time.

“It’s the big one,” Corona said. “You’ve got to get a chance.”

Donut Tyme and other lottery sellers say their ticket sales can increase as much as four-fold when the jackpot reaches this level. Customers have to wait in lines that sometimes snake out to a business’s parking lot and beyond.

“All moing was crazy,” said Evelyn Chau, 42, whose family owns Donut Tyme, “just waves of people. We sell a lot.”

And when evening comes, and people leave work, the crush at the counter is even worse, said Eduardo Duran, 42, who works at Blue Bird Liquor in Hawthoe.

“When it gets down to the wire, people start flocking to the store,” Duran said in a telephone interview.

Even the people behind the counter are not immune to the fever.

Duran said he doesn’t normally play the lottery, but “when it gets crazy like this, I do. I see the commercials and I see people dreaming. I want to be one of those (people) too.”

Blue Bird attracts a lot of lottery buyers because it has historically sold a lot of wiing tickets over the years, with seven of them worth more than $1 million. A small plastic bluebird on the counter serves as a talisman for customers.

“Once they buy their ticket, they rub the bluebird,” Duran said. “We love it. We’re here to help people and try to get people rich.”

Donut Tyme has its own lucky aura.

In March, the store sold a SuperLotto Plus ticket worth $22 million.

“This is the lucky place,” said Gina Aviles, 60, or Riverside, who stopped in to buy $10 worth of MEGA Millions tickets. “I met someone here that had won big.”

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Aviles said she hasn’t had her tu yet. The best she’s done was to win $2 on a scratcher, she said. She did win $50 in a lottery once in her home country of Nicaragua.

Wiing millions of dollars, she said, “I don’t think is going to make me any happier. But it would pay for college for my kids and stuff. I don’t want it all, just a little bit.”

Mike Malik at Tuxedo Liquor in Riverside, said his store his its own history with luck. In 2012, it sold a Califoia Lottery ticket worth $350,000.

Malik said he looks forward to the vibe created by a large jackpot.

“Sometimes our parking lot can be so full that our other customers can’t get a place,” he said.

On Tuesday, he said, customers were excitedly talking about the pot of money they might win.

Even he bought at ticket.

“Just one ticket,” he said. “If you want to win, you’re going to win with one ticket.”