Tampabay: Hopes grow as big as odds are small


		[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
		Clear Channel employees Mehmet Kizmaz, bottom, and Erik Turner, top, work to change a Florida Lotto sign Thursday near downtown Tampa. By Saturday evening, ticket sales statewide are expected to peak at 60,000 per minute. That's 1,000 tickets per second.

A nice round number like $100-million fires up the imagination and frees up a few extra bucks for lottery tickets.

The Florida Lotto has rolled over a record 11 times without a winner. So, for the first time in 12 years, the jackpot has reached the eye-popping sum of $100,000,000.

"That's a lot of zeros," said Kevin Stokes, 33, as he bought five tickets Thursday at Shep's Food Mart in St. Petersburg. "That's mind-blowing. I can't imagine that much money, but if I won, I'm sure I could get used to the idea."

This is the second-highest prize in the lottery's 14-year history. By Saturday evening, Lotto players may see long lines at some stores as ticket sales statewide are expected to peak at 60,000 per minute. That's 1,000 tickets per second.

Pam Bocook and Angela Duby, clerks at a Circle K on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, call it "the dance" when the jackpot gets this big. They have to twirl and weave around each other on their way to the ticket machine.

"Saturday is going to be crazy in here," said Bocook, who has seen lines weave all the way back to the Icee machine. "Everyone waits until the last half-hour. I'm expecting to be bald-headed by Saturday night."

Florida's biggest jackpots typically go to multiple winners. The all-time record, $106.5-million, was shared by six winners in 1990. But if one person wins the lottery Saturday, he or she would get $3.3-million a year for 30 years, or a one-time payout of $54-million.

"We hope we can produce at least one winner this time," said Florida Lottery spokesman Sam Oliver.

The rare nine-figure jackpot is fueling some pretty nice daydreams.

"I'd give a lot of it away. Let's put it this way, a lot of my friends would be millionaires," said Jim Lostetter, who stopped in a driving rain Thursday to buy his lucky numbers at a Kash n' Karry on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa.

He's not holding his breath. "A snowball's chance in hell" is how he described the prospect of winning.

The odds: 1 in 23-million.

Up in Dade City, Mina Bakarania sells hundreds of lottery tickets every day to hopeful customers at the JN Food Mart she owns on U.S. 301. And the 43-year-old mother has a touch of Lotto fever herself.

"If God gives me lucky numbers, then I'll win," she said. If so, she'd give some money to local Hindu temples and save most of it for her two sons. Beyond that, she's not sure she could find ways spend it all.

"It's too much money."

-- Times staff writers Matthew Waite and Molly Moorhead contributed to this report.