Chevron worker hits lottery gusher

In the end, it was stuck to a barbecue and buried behind plastic bags in a kitchen cupboard.

But when Jessie McGinnis, 55, spotted the small square of orange paper in his kitchen Monday, he knew exactly what to expect.

"I turned it over — 23, 32, 33, 39, 43," he said Thursday with a wide smile, still marveling at his luck. "$338,106."

McGinnis had spent the preceding days searching in vain for the $10 in "quick picks" he purchased at a Yuba City 7-Eleven the day after Christmas. But after agonizingly going through all this belongings and work living quarters, he had given up.

"I was hoping someone claimed it so I didn't think the rest of my life I had lost the winning ticket," he said.

The Yuba City store at Stabler Lane and Butte House Road was one of three in the state to sell a Mega Millions ticket matching five out of six numbers. The winners split a $1,014,318 prize, each receiving $338,106.

McGinnis' curiosity started last week when he was reading the Appeal-Democrat online and saw no one had claimed a winning ticket sold at the local store. He remembered buying a ticket there on a whim before leaving for Bakersfield, where he works for Chevron North America Exploration and Production Co. on a 14-days on, 14-days off work schedule as a senior drill site manager. He wondered if it was worth it to drive 50 miles from his station to the office where his truck was parked with the ticket.

In the end, the desire to know won out.

But McGinnis tore through his truck twice and couldn't find it, and a search of his trailer turned up nothing. He searched his truck again when he drove in for an office meeting the following day, but concluded it was a lost cause.

"I knew there was a chance it was a winner and it was gone," he said.

On Monday, McGinnis was looking for trash bags when he opened the lower kitchen cabinet and right in front of him was the ticket he'd been looking for five days.

He called his wife and asked her to sit down. "I said, "I found the ticket, and it's a winner,'" he recalled. "There's dead silence on the phone. She didn't believe me."

McGinnis and his co-workers checked the numbers again online and he texted one of his sons to show his wife. But it wasn't until he drove to Yuba City and returned to the 7-Eleven on Wednesday that the win was confirmed.

He walked over and kissed store manager Ravinder Dhindsa on the forehead and stuck his ticket in the machine.

"I'm just amazed. It's really hard to fathom," he said. "It's been a fairy tale until now."

First thing Thursday morning, McGinnis drove to Sacramento to the lottery district office to claim his prize, and state lottery officials confirmed he is the winner.

It answered a question Dhindsa and her regular lottery customers have had for days.

"I'm so happy for him," Dhindsa gushed. "He's a nice customer, regular customer and good customer."

Yuba City resident Charlene Tahara has been buying tickets at the Butte House 7-Eleven for a decade and stopped in a dozen times to see if a winner emerged.

"Even though none of us won, we are excited because we come in here all the time ... All of us were giddy," she said. "We've just been crazy waiting for him to show up."

McGinnis and his wife, who wished to go unnamed, have been married 33 years and have three adopted children, ages 14, 17 and 18.

They plan to pay off everything but the mortgage, set aside the rest for the future and college funds and perhaps splurge on a Disney cruise.

"There's a lot more important, I think, like raising kids, being healthy, living your life," he said. "This is great, but it's not the most important."

Until that December morning, McGinnis had gone two years without buying a ticket. He was once a regular, but in a decade's time he only won $5 twice and $90 once.

"I never matched more than two numbers so I quit buying. What possessed me to buy that ticket I have no idea."

"I might start playing a little bit more now," McGinnis added. "But I'm not buying tickets from anyone other than Ravinder."

CONTACT Ashley Gebb at agebb@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4783. Find her on Facebook at /ADagebb or on Twitter at @ADagebb.