Pancakes Net Carlsbad Woman $100,000 Lottery Prize

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5/27/2010 8:08:06 AM - ALBUQUERQUE – Long-time Carlsbad restaurateur Oceana Holcomb won a $100,000 prize from the New Mexico Lottery.

On Monday, Holcomb, owner of the 53-year-old North Y Drive In, left her kitchen to buy pancake mix for the next day’s breakfast crowd as well as five tickets from the lottery’s “$100,000 Chile Cash” Scratcher game. After handing the pancake mix to her cook, Holcomb played the Scratchers, revealing the $100,000 prize on the fourth ticket. She called her son, Rodney Holcomb, right away.

“I was shaking,” she recalled for lottery officials in Albuquerque. “(Rodney) thought there was something wrong me and that he was going to have to call 911.”

Before driving to lottery headquarters in Albuquerque Tuesday, Holcomb opened her restaurant to diners who ate the very pancakes that led her to lottery good fortune. After paying a few bills, the 82-year-old grandmother said she plans to invest her prize.

Holcomb’s lucky ticket came from La Tienda Food Jet at 1095 S. Canal St. Previously, the grocery store has sold 33 large prize-winning lottery tickets paying between $1,000 and $80,000.

As a weekly lottery player, Holcomb said she keeps a goal in mind.

“When I buy my tickets, I tell the clerks that I’m supporting the lottery so my grandkids can go to college,” she said.

Since its inception in 1996, the New Mexico Lottery has raised $435 million for education and more than 61,000 students have attended the state’s public college and universities on Legislative Lottery Scholarships.

As of the Spring 2009 semester, 1,900 high school graduates and GED recipients from Eddy County have received $7 million in Legislative Lottery Scholarships.