Store That Sold $425m Lotto Ticket Gets $1m

A Northern California convenience store that sold the sole winning ticket to the $425 million Powerball jackpot received a $1 million check on Thursday, as state lottery officials waited for the winner of the one of the largest jackpots in U.S. history to come forward.

The California Lottery presented the check to Parmeet Singh, whose family owns Dixon Landing Chevron in Milpitas, a city about 10 miles north of San Jose that bills itself as The Gateway to The Silicon Valley. In California, retailers who sell winning jackpot tickets receive a share of the prize money up to $1 million, according to lottery officials.

The family-run gas station is just off Highway 880, with an attached carwash and Subway sandwich shop. The parking lot was crowded Thursday morning with news vans while inside the store, dozens of reporters and photographers crowded the aisles of snack foods as Singh talked about his surprise at hearing the news. The store’s regular customers bantered about the prospect that one of them could have been the winner.

Singh said his father, Kulwinder Singh, owns the store but was en route to India and wasn’t expected to hear about the $1 million prize until after he landed in New Delhi around 11 a.m. PST Thursday and called the family. He had given his son his cellphone before leaving to avoid any business headaches that might come up during his absence, Singh said.

He planned to tease his dad before breaking the news.

“‘Hey dad, what would you do if you had $1 million?’” he said he would ask him.

His parents are humble people, he said, so he didn’t expect them to splurge on anything. The family would likely reinvest the money in their chain of eight gas stations, he said.

Powerball is played in 43 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The odds of matching all six numbers are 1 in about 175 million.

This article appeared in print on page 3 of the February 21st, 2014 edition of Hamodia.