POWERBALL TICKET WORTH $1.8M SOLD AT CHULA VISTA GAS STATION

A lottery ticket worth about $1.8 million was sold at a gas station in Chula Vista’s Eastlake neighborhood, the California Lottery announced Sunday.

The ticket matched five numbers in Saturday night’s Powerball drawing. The numbers drawn were 8, 21, 31, 32, 37, and the Powerball number was 23. The jackpot was $73 million.

There were no tickets sold with all six numbers, and the jackpot for tonight’s drawing was expected to grow to $87 million.

The $1.8 million ticket was sold at a Shell gas station on Eastlake Parkway, north of Otay Lakes Road and east of state Route 125.

Manager Ernesto Martinez said he checked the drawing results when he started his Sunday shift at 6 a.m. He didn’t believe the news until he read the results again.

“I was so happy,” Martinez said in a phone interview Sunday afternoon. “This is the first time this has happened.”

The winner had not been publicly identified as of Sunday afternoon.

Martinez, who has worked at the gas station for about 20 years, said the same customers tend to buy lottery tickets.

“We already know all of them,” he said.

He said he contacted the gas station owner, who was elated and vowed to divvy up his share of the winnings with employees. Retailers are awarded half of 1 percent of the prize for winning tickets in the Powerball and other games, with a cap at $1 million, according to the California Lottery. That’s roughly $9,000 for the Chula Vista gas station in the latest Powerball drawing.

The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is 1 in about 293 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which conducts the game.

The Powerball game is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Information about how to claim a prize can be found at calottery.com.