$141 million California lottery jackpot lures many Nevadans

Jeffrey Libby

Monday, June 25, 2001 | 10:53 a.m.

NIPTON, Calif. -- Edward Magdaleno's wife called him while he was at work in Von's bakery at 1 a.m. Saturday to instruct him that when he was through with his shift, he and his10-year-old son would be driving south to Nipton for California Lotto tickets.

"I can tell you exactly what I had in the oven," Magdaleno, a Henderson resident, said, his mustache waxed into two crisp circles beneath a baseball cap. "I had muffins and bun cakes and chocolate brownies."

Like most of the Nevadans lined up in the half-shade of oleanders outside the Nipton Trading Post Friday and Saturday, Magdaleno drove about 65 miles and waited more than three hours in 92-degree heat to buy a chance at $141 million -- the largest single-state jackpot in U.S. history.

The single winning ticket, at odds of about 1 in 41 million, was sold at a liquor store in San Jose, Calif., lottery officials said. The winner had not come forward as of this morning.

But Saturday afternoon, with dreams of private jets, recreational vehicles and early retirement still twirling in Nevadans' heads, the wait and heat and long odds produced not impatience or despair, but words of dreamy idealism and generosity.

"It's big. I'm willing to share," 45-year-old Ronald Pidgeon, a computer technician for Harrah's Las Vegas and father of four, said.

Diano Mugnaini, 54, a retired toll booth operator from Lucca, a small town he described as between the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Florence, Italy, said a winning ticket would bring him closer to nature.

"I'd travel more. Why not? I'd buy a Winnebago. I'd go south in the winter and north in the summer. I'd follow the ducks."

Beyond dreams of a smoother future, many of the first-time visitors to the tiny railroad town of Nipton, population 27, counted themselves lucky for the moment.

Most had driven by Primm, about 25 miles nearer to Las Vegas, where a longer line snaked across an unprotected parking lot in temperatures hovering closer to 110 degrees. Using directions from media newscasts and from friends, they continued south until they hit Nipton Road, a good 10-mile stretch across the belly of the Ivanpah Valley in San Bernardino County. Even so, there were skeptics.

"As I'm driving out here, I see one clump of trees far off, and I'm thinking, what would possess someone to live out here?" Magdelano said. Jerry and Roxanne Freeman, who opened the trading post in the mid-1980s and operate a restored 1920s hotel next door, didn't mind the crowd of city folks, most of whom were the fairweather type of lottery players. It was the first time the Freemans had seen such crowds since 1991, when the California lottery hit $119 million.

With four people working one cash register and one lottery machine, the husband-and-wife team seemed remarkably relaxed even halfway into their second straight 11-hour day of nonstop lottery sales. Jerry Freeman estimated that by closing time Saturday he would have sold 60,000 tickets since Friday, when the news broke that the $82 million jackpot had rolled for a ninth time. Normally Freeman sells 3,000 tickets a week.

"They call this Lotto mania," Freeman said, zipping tickets into the machine, catching them as the machine spit them out and zipping them in again.

"It used to start around $40 million, but now you need that third digit. And when you get it, you get this gut thing. Did you ever read the book 'The Madness of Crowds?' "

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.