County Gets a $2-Million State Lottery Winner

Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.

But finally, on Monday, the lottery wheel stopped at $2 million for a San Diego County resident. Geraldine Lafferty, a 48-year-old gas station attendant, became the first local lottery winner to break the million-dollar barrier. Previously the richest San Diego winner had brought home $100,000.

Lafferty, a Spring Valley resident, joins two other Californians who won $2 million in the state lottery Monday: Mary Cunningham, a 37-year-old car dashboard sander from Broderick, and Jerry King, 45, a Torrance engineer. An even bigger winner Monday--the state’s first $3 million winner--was unemployed Simi Valley machinist Walter Simpson, 48.

Lafferty took time off her gas station job at Miramar Naval Air Station to spin the wheel Monday but plans to be back at work this morning, one of her co-workers said.

Lafferty recalled calling out to her daughter when she got the winning $100 scratch-off lottery ticket that is needed to qualify for the Big Spin.

“You sound like a sick cow, Mom,” her daughter responded, a wire service story reported.

Lafferty bought her winning ticket, which qualified her for the Big Spin, at a Hallmark shop near her home in Spring Valley, said a spokesman for Needham, Porter and Novelli, the public relations firm representing the California State Lottery.

She told the firm she plans to pay off her car loan with the money and save the rest for her three children and four grandchildren.