COBB COUNTY, Ga — At Heby’s Food Mart in Mableton, it happened 12 years ago. Tony Gomez remembers it like it was yesterday.
“This is not a huge store. People think smaller stores win. The owner of the store is a great guy. Just to be at a store where somebody won that amount of money — you feel a kinship. ‘Hey, I go there!’”
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It was the time the store sold a winning lottery jackpot ticket worth $116 million. On Friday, there was a little more at stake. “Mega Millions,” the store’s owner exclaimed.
“Well, $430 million. I don’t know what I would do. I might be broke in 3 weeks at $430 million,” lottery player Willie Potts said.
Around Christmastime, really big jackpot or not, ticket sales in this store pick up. Big orders for barbecue pick up too. Chef Shombe Jones cooks it up in the back.
“Good barbecue. Lucky tickets. Family fun,” the chef said.
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Some players say they’ll pick up a few extra tickets for stocking stuffers. They want to make sure they buy them in the store with the track record.
“There are a lot of winners here. I think a lot of people come here, and you guys come here. Because this store — some people say it’s pretty lucky,” shopper Gomez said.
Heby’s owner says if the jackpot rolls over into Friday, Dec. 23, he’ll see a huge spike in tickets sales that day because they will end up in Christmas stockings.
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