Winning Powerball ticket sold in Milpitas

For the second time in a month, a winning lottery ticket worth hundreds of millions was purchased in Northern California.

But this time, the lucky player won’t have to share the jackpot.

A Powerball ticket purchased at a Chevron gas station in the Bay Area city of Milpitas was the only one in the country to match all six numbers and is worth $425.3 million, state lottery officials said.

There also were two tickets purchased in California that matched five of the six winning numbers, each worth about $1.4 million each. One ticket was purchased in El Segundo, the other in Modesto, officials said.

The latest jackpot winner did not come forward Thursday, and has up to a year to claim the prize. But Alex Traverso, a spokesman with the California Lottery, said people usually turn their ticket in within a week.

“I give the person the first day to be shocked,” Traverso said, “and then the wheels start turning.”

Wednesday’s jackpot was the sixth largest in U.S. lottery history. It comes weeks after Steve Tran claimed half of a $648-million Mega Millions jackpot with a ticket he bought a few miles south of Milpitas in San Jose. The other winning ticket was purchased in Atlanta.

Almost immediately after officials announced where Wednesday’s winning ticket was sold, media descended on Dixon Landing Chevron, near a Starbucks just off Interstate 880.

Parmeet Singh, 24, said his family has owned the gas station since 2009 and is one of seven lottery retailers owned by his family.

Before learning he had sold the winning ticket, Singh said, a $10,000 Scratcher had been the biggest winner the station had sold.

By Thursday afternoon, lottery officials had visited the store and updated computer monitors with a display that said: “A Powerball prize of $400,000,000 was won on 2/19/14, here at DIXON LANDING CHEVRON.”

Then they presented Singh with the prize for selling the winning Powerball ticket — $1 million.

“It’s out of this world,” he said. “You feel like you’re floating, like everything is a dream.”

A few months ago, Singh said, his father, Kulwinder, had booked a trip to India to visit friends and family. Singh said he dropped his father off at the airport Wednesday for an afternoon flight that wasn’t expected to arrive until Thursday.

Singh said his father promised he would call once he got settled, to let him know he had arrived safely.

The gas station operator said he plans to say one of two things to his father.

“Dad, what would you do with $1 million?”

Or simply, “Hey — you’re a millionaire.”

[email protected]