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Stories usually don’t start with numbers.

But then lottery tickets worth nearly $10 million usually don’t go unclaimed, either.

It’s been a month since a Lotto drawing for a ticket worth $9.7 million. The prize purchase was made at a 7-Eleven store in Shoreline, at 1232 N. 185th St.

Washington State Lottery officials are trying to find the instantly wealthy winner. This is the largest Lotto prize that has gone unclaimed since 1993, when a $6 million ticket was left without a taker.

“Chances are somebody is walking around with a 2-inch slip of paper worth $9.7 million and they don’t know it. We want them to claim it,” said Jacque Coe, spokeswoman for the Washington State Lottery.

Coe said that while the claim limit is 180 days, the invisible winner is not only baffling others, but also losing money — in more ways than one. Even at a conservative interest rate of 3.25 percent, having the prize money in the bank for the month would have earned “enough money to take a family on a really nice vacation to Hawaii,” Coe said.

“This is very unusual,” she added. “If you had the winning lottery ticket, would you waste any time getting in and claiming it?”

At the Shoreline 7-Eleven on Monday, a large sign on the window depicting a check announced that the store “sold the winning ticket” of “nine million seven hundred thousand dollars.”

At lunchtime, construction and utility workers, moms with babies, teens and others pulled into the parking lot for drinks, sandwiches, burritos, newspapers and tobacco.

But alas, no spontaneous jigs or whoops of fiscal liberation.

Nobody even tried the ticket-scanner.

“A lot of people have come in asking who the winner is,” said clerk Bobby Lewis.

“Some people have come in saying they lost their ticket, that they probably had the winner. They’re serious.”

Lewis said there has been a bump in Lotto ticket sales since the news, which Coe said is not unusual.

“After a store has a winning ticket, people often believe it’s a lucky store, and we see an increase in sales,” Coe said.

Luck, she said, does strike twice. The Mercer Mini-Mart on Queen Anne sold a $4 million ticket and a $1 million winner several years apart.

“A lot of it has to do with the volume — the numbers of people buying,” Coe said.

Bob Seronko, owner of the 7-Eleven store, said, “It’s just nice to see something good happen for someone and the fact that it’s one of our customers is really exciting.”

Coe said it is possible that the ticket is lost, but lottery officials are hoping the winner simply hasn’t checked their ticket yet.

Should no one claim the ticket, by law the prize money must be disbursed to players, lottery officials said.

One-third of the prize fund goes to economic development.

The state lottery, which was established in 1982, has generated more than $2.4 billion to state programs ranging from K-12 school construction to problem gambling prevention and treatment.

Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/376445_ticket26.html