Lucky Times Pull Tabs and Standing Together Against Rape, the nonprofit that stands to benefit from the lottery, are offering a $500,000 jackpot in the drawing scheduled for 7 p.m. at Rumrunners Old Towne Bar downtown. The drawing had been set for New Year's Eve but was postponed because of delays getting ticket stubs in from outlying areas, according to organizers.
Lucky Times' gaming license and STAR's permit expired on Dec. 31, and neither group met the deadline to reapply to ensure they had a temporary permit to continue operations in 2009, said Jeff Prather, gaming supervisor with the state tax division.
The license and permit issued Tuesday mean the event can move forward as planned, he said.
"We just got the liability insurance for the Rumrunners location," Prather said. "They're all right now."
The state still plans to investigate and possibly take action on reports that Lucky Times and its partners continued to sell the lottery tickets after Lucky Times owner Abe Spicola's gaming license expired, Prather said.
Spicola attributed the lapse to a delay in getting the paperwork processed.
He was in Juneau Tuesday selling tickets there, but otherwise tickets were only available in Anchorage, said Heidi Spicola, Abe's wife and co-owner of Lucky Times. Tickets will still be sold at Lucky Times on Spenard Road, at Rumrunners and at American Legion Post 1 on Fireweed Lane until Thursday, and on Friday only Lucky Times will sell them until 3 p.m., she said.
Organizers won't say how many of the $5 tickets they've sold, but Abe Spicola said last week sales were approaching 130,000. Organizers have already reached the $500,000 needed to pay the prize, they say.
"We've been pretty steady and still lots of calls coming in just trying to figure out where Lucky Times is located," Heidi Spicola said.
Helping Lucky Times deal with the influx of calls Tuesday afternoon was Ginger George-Smith, events development coordinator for STAR. She said the event had been a learning curve for all involved but that everything was on track for the Friday drawing.
STAR, which stands to get at least 10 percent of what's left after the prize is paid, still plans to partner up with Lucky Times to hold other events in the future, she said.
"We do have plans to move forward with it," George-Smith said. "We're not going to work the kinks out for somebody else to come in, if we can help it, anyway."
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