Lost Chance at ‘Big Spin’ Has Him Going in Circles
- Share via
Gene Campbell had gone months without winning more than a couple of bucks, so when he scratched off a $100 winner in the California Lottery last November, the El Toro resident figured his luck was changing.
The ticket qualified him for a drawing to participate in the lottery’s “Big Spin,” with a top prize of $2 million.
“I said, ‘I feel lucky about it. . . . I don’t have to buy any more (tickets), because this is it!’ ” he recalled. But instead of a chance at the big prize, Campbell said Wednesday, all he got was a headache--from trying to deal with state lottery officials who apparently lost his ticket and claim form.
More than two months had passed since he sent the ticket and form to Sacramento, Campbell said, with no word on the drawing to enter the Big Spin and no $100 check. On Feb. 3, he called the lottery’s toll-free number for the first time.
Since then, he’s been on the phone with lottery employees practically every week, Campbell said. And almost always, “They say, ‘We’ll get back with you within a week.’ . . . (but) not once have I ever gotten anything in the mail or ever been called back. Everything has been on my own. . . .
“I am sure they have lost it altogether and don’t know what to do,” Campbell said, estimating that he has spent the equivalent of two or three working days trying to collect his winnings.
However, Ulysses Carter, the lottery’s district manager for Orange County, said, “The state doesn’t operate like that.
“He (Campbell) has been working only through Sacramento? That’s very difficult. That’s what we’re out here for in the district office. We want to help him get his money.
“He should come to this office,” Carter added. “. . . We certainly will get on top of it. We will find out what happened to (the ticket).”
Other officials in Sacramento said Campbell’s experience is atypical and stressed that they are trying to make their operation more responsive to the public.
“We’ve had hundreds of thousands of tickets go through here, and we’ve had very few that have been lost,” said John Schade, the lottery’s director of public affairs in Sacramento. “I think we have somewhere about a dozen claims like his.”
Lottery officials on April 3 received a copy of Campbell’s claim, originally dated Nov. 27, Schade said. “We have no record now that it (the original) was ever received. We are trying to determine if it was received.”
If the ticket can be traced, lottery officials will recommend that the State Board of Control award the $100 to Campbell and put his name in a pool for a future Big Spin drawing, Schade said. Otherwise, Campbell would have to appeal to the review board for claims against state agencies.
Campbell, who repairs computer-controlled machinery for an Irvine tool company, said he used to buy two or three lottery tickets a week, but “now I don’t buy any.”
More to Read
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.