Powerball fever heats up in Sonoma County

Saturday’s record Powerball jackpot, which reached $800 million on Friday morning and continues to swell, inspired would-be millionaires across the North Coast to plunk down their money on lottery tickets Friday in hopes of beating dizzying odds to win unimaginable riches.

“It’s more than I can spend in my lifetime, what’s left of it,” said Edward Rich, who purchased his $2 Powerball ticket at Campus Market and Deli, a Mendocino Avenue convenience store across the street from Santa Rosa Junior College.

“I’ve already decided that my kids would get most of it,” said Rich, a semi-retired contractor who lives between Cloverdale and Geyserville.

Rich, who does maintenance work on the building that houses Campus Market and other shops, said he usually plays SuperLotto Plus, because the odds are better. But since the jackpot for the Powerball lottery was so big, he said he couldn’t help but buy a ticket.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about 1 in 292 million, according to the Powerball website. The odds of getting struck by lightning in the United States in an 80-year lifetime is 1 in 12,000, according to the National Weather Service.

The list goes on. You’re more likely to become a film star, date a supermodel, travel to space, become president of the United States and do just about anything - except live forever - than win the Powerball jackpot.

But the way Campus Market owner Harbans Singh looks at it, anyone who buys a Powerball ticket has the same chance as the next guy who buys a ticket.

“You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket,” Singh said.

At his busier Rohnert Park store, A and L Market, $1,096 of the $1,400 in lottery tickets he sold Thursday were Powerball tickets.

The store selling the winning ticket gets a share of the prize - it could be as much as $1 million if a single winning ticket is sold, according to the California Lottery. Singh said it would be nice to sell the winning ticket.

“I hope you do, because you deserve it,” Rich said.

At Benton Market at Benton and Orchard streets in Santa Rosa’s Junior College neighborhood, about half of the customers will buy a ticket when the Powerball jackpot gets this high, store owner Sukhrinder Singh said. He usually gets about 350 to 400 customers a day.

“When there is a big jackpot, of course, a lot of customers come in,” he said, adding that he expects traffic for Powerball tickets to ramp up throughout Saturday before the drawing at 7:59 p.m.

Harbans Singh said many people buy multiple Powerball tickets in an attempt to increase their odds, usually spending $20 for 10 tickets.

Deben Shrestha, a salesman at Sam’s Market on the corner of South E and Clark streets, said one of his regular customers came in Thursday morning and bought $146 in Powerball tickets. That same customer, he said, came in Friday morning to buy an additional $184 worth of Powerball tickets.

But California Lottery officials encourage responsible play.

“We appreciate the people who get excited about large jackpots, but at the same time we urge people to play responsibly, within their budget, within their means,” said Russ Lopez, a California Lottery spokesman. “It doesn’t help anybody if you’re spending money that should be used for something else. It doesn’t help the player, the family and even the California Lottery.”

Lopez said it doesn’t do help the California Lottery’s reputation any good when people get carried away and “spend all their money on a game where the odds are against them.”

Powerball is a multi-state game played in 44 states across the country, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Drawings are held Wednesdays and Saturdays at 7:59 p.m. PST.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.