One lucky person in SLO County has a lottery ticket worth over half a million dollars

One lucky person in San Luis Obispo County won over half a million dollars on Tuesday, when 5 of the 6 numbers on their Mega Millions ticket matched the winning numbers.

The ticket, which is worth $562,472, was sold at Quick Stop on Broad Street in San Luis Obispo, California Lottery spokesman Greg Parashak confirmed.

Quick Stop won’t receive a retail bonus, as the ticket sold was worth under a million dollars, Parashak said. But the store will receive a display check showing that it sold the lucky ticket.

“We don’t get much commission on this, but you’re happy when you know the money stayed local,” Issa Abdullah, the owner of Quick Stop, told The Tribune. “San Luis is a small community, everybody knows everybody, and you feel like, when you hear such good news, the whole town is happy for them.”’

Abdullah said this is the biggest winning ticket he’s seen in the year that he’s owned the store, and he hopes the winner uses some of that money to help people in need.

Abdo Akkari, the store’s manager, said the experience has been “awesome” and people have been coming in all morning to buy Powerball tickets.

“They say, ‘Oh! The lucky store! I want to win the (Powerball) here!” Akkari said, laughing. “Maybe we’ll do it again! No one knows.”

The winner hasn’t come forward yet, Parashak said, but “it’s still pretty early.”

The winning numbers were 5, 28, 62, 65, 70 and Mega Ball 5. One ticket sold in South Carolina matched all six to take the jackpot of $1.537 billion.

Seven other tickets sold in California also had 5 of the 6 winning numbers, Parashak said. Those winners were in Stockton, Rancho Cucamonga, San Diego, Chatsworth, Arcadia, Norwalk and San Francisco.

Altogether, the dollar amount of the winnings before being split 8 ways is $4,499,776, Parashak said.

At the peak of sales on Tuesday, Parashak said, 700 tickets were sold per second, and $85,000 worth of tickets were sold every minute statewide.

He said that, if no one wins the Powerball in its drawings Wednesday night and Saturday, “we could possibly be talking about this same thing a week from now.”

“All that it takes is $2 and lots of luck,” Abdullah said. “Dreams do come true at the California Lottery.”

This story was originally published October 24, 2018 at 4:02 PM.