Lottery Millionaires Gather at Fair to Share Their Good Fortunes

Victor Khouri’s dream came true in many ways when his quick-pick Lotto numbers were the winners in a California state lottery drawing last year.

Khouri, a San Diego bookbinder, said he had a premonition that he would win because he had dreamed on his birthday exactly one month earlier that he would do so.

“I have been pretty lucky; that was my lucky day,” Khouri said of the Jan. 27, 1988, drawing in which he and two others won $1.46 million each.

Khouri was one of a group of San Diego County lottery millionaires who gathered at the Del Mar Fair on Saturday to share experiences and dreams of hitting the “big one” with fairgoers.

The get-together was sponsored by the state lottery’s San Diego district office, which has an informational booth at the fair.

Despite the financial security, many of the winners on hand said their life had not changed much.

“It really hasn’t,” said Sharon Sniffin, who won $1.78 million in November, 1988.

Though she purchased a new Mustang convertible for her daughter Katherine, 15, the Santee resident said the winnings--distributed in annual payments over 20 years--will be invested and used to pay for her two daughters’ college educations. She still works as an office manager for California Carpets.

Sniffin’s daughter got the car because “She deserved it, she picked the numbers,” Sniffin said.

“We were sitting at home on a lazy day, and I said I was going to buy some tickets, and she was concentrating on her book--didn’t really want to be bothered--and rattled off some numbers.”

The most difficult thing, Sniffin said, was waiting to find out how many others would share in the $7.01-million jackpot. Four winners, including Sniffin and Jamul resident John M. Hanks, split the prize.

“If we had won the whole amount, we’d have probably gone hog wild,” Sniffin said.

The most recent San Diego Big Spin winner, Stephen Jacobson of La Mesa, said he had an inkling that he might become a millionaire. His best friend had told him he would win $1 million, and at a party given him by co-workers, he cut out a million-dollar slice of cake shaped like the Big Spin.

‘People Tell Me I’m Lucky’

Jacobson, 26, a claim specialist with the San Diego district attorney’s office, won $1 million on the Big Spin on June 10. He had previously won $1,000 in a lotto scratch-off game. A year ago, he won a cruise.

“People tell me I’m lucky,” Jacobson said.

He will receive $40,000 annually for the next 20 years. A few fairgoers Saturday recognized Jacobson from the airing of the Big Spin television show.

“It was definitely an experience,” he said. “The ball fell out of one million-dollar slot into another one. I was jumping up and down when it stopped.”