California Lottery: $28.5 million lottery jackpot remains unclaimedGoing ... going ... not quite gone.
The mystery winner holding the missing jackpot lottery ticket from the Sept. 10 California SuperLotto Plus drawing has until March 8 -- that's Monday -- to claim the $28.5 million prize. After that, the money goes into the public schools pot.
"We've been wondering for over six months," said Mona Sanders, the California Lottery sales representative for the San Lorenzo store that sold the winning ticket. "Someone asks every day" if the winning ticket has been turned in.
As of Monday, the answer was no.
The winning numbers: 34, 43, 27, 20, 7 and Mega Number 6.
If the ticket-holder does not come forward, it will be the largest unclaimed jackpot in California Lottery history, bigger than the $25 million prize that went begging in Los Angeles in 2000.
The missing ticket was sold at Kavanagh's Liquors, on Via Mercado, just off Hesperian Boulevard, and was one of two winners that day.
The other, also worth $28.5 million, was purchased at Seacliff Plaza in Aptos.
Lottery proceeds are split among the winners, who share about 52 percent, and California public schools, which receive about 35 percent.
Kavanagh's gets half a percent of the $28.5 million that the ticket is worth, or $142,500, and it gets the money whether the prize is claimed or not.
The San Lorenzo store is already the luckiest in Northern California. The unclaimed ticket is the fourth and largest jackpot winner the store has sold. Only three stores in California have sold as many or more: One in Port Hueneme, near Oxnard, which has sold six; one in Baker, which has sold five; and one in Hawthorne, which has sold four.
