Lottery madness: Wednesday jackpot jumps to over $1 billion

SAN JOSE, Calif. - There was no winning Powerball ticket on Monday night. But, two tickets with five numbers were sold in Southern California. Each ticket is worth about $790,000. 

Lottery officials expect Wednesday's drawing to be over a billion dollars. 
 

People across the Bay Area took their chance, and said with this much money on the line, they just had to take a shot at winning it.   

"I got a text from my wife: Got to give it a shot!" said Powerball player, Arne Lang-Ree.  

With a billion dollars on the line, one man came to a Los Gatos Mobile gas station in his Halloween costume because he simply couldn’t resist.   

"Don’t want to be the one who missed out. It turns into a cultural event. You just kind of want to be a part of it, so you can say, you got your ticket, gave it a shot," said Lang-Ree,  

Earlier this month, one lucky person bought a ticket worth $1.5 million at the same gas station. This 7-Eleven in San Jose on Kooser Rd. also recently sold a ticket worth $247 million. One man said he has played the lottery here before but this time, he used a lucky charm in hopes of winning it all.   

"I was here before. I’m back again. I’m hoping to get lucky tonight. Hopefully I have the winning ticket. I brought my special envelope that has special money. So I’m going to use it tonight, and hopefully it’s going to be the winning ticket," said Alberto Lejano.   

Lejano said there’s an old myth that if you keep dollar bills numbered from one through 12 in a Chinese envelope, it’ll bring you luck. 

"My girlfriend sent me here because the last winner came from here, so she wanted to get a ticket from here," said Richard Perez.    

This was only the 2nd time Powerball has reached at least a billion dollars, and it’s the 5th largest jackpot in U.S. history.