To sell a winning lottery ticket
By Mohammad Faroqi, Manager Chevron Food Mart/Seminary Drive.
“At 10:30 p.m. last May 2nd, I got a call from the state lottery saying the winning ticket in the $227 Mega Millions Lottery was bought at this store. At first, we thought that meant we’d get a million dollars for selling the ticket. Only five of us work here, so that was nice. The person also said the winner had bought his ticket at 11:18 p.m. the night before. So we checked the surveillance camera and saw a Marin County sheriff buying tickets; we know him, he stops in many times on patrols. Then past midnight, the state called again saying there were lottery winners in Ohio and Virginia also, so the sheriff gets $75.7 million, not $227 million. Still, that meant $375,000 to us. Nice. Then the caller said the owner of the store gets the money, not the guys working here. Chevron owns the store, so we got nothing. Well not really; we did get bonus checks depending on how much we’ve worked here. That was kind of nice.”
To visit North Korea
“It was surreal. This was my second trip to North Korea for the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation working to halt nuclear proliferation. Still, touching down in Pyongyang, I was excited by the utter mystery of the place. Inside the terminal it was colder than outside, heat evidently being too precious a commodity to waste on common people. The sole baggage turnstile was tiny and looked like surplus from the 1970s. My colleague whispered, ‘What do you think of the world’s newest nuclear weapons country?’ Point taken: how could a nation, with an infrastructure seemingly 50 years old, succeed at making a nuclear bomb? At our hotel—for foreigners only—staff outnumbered guests 20 to one. Outside, it was clear and frigid, pierced by the rough stench of a nearby coal-fired power plant. We were driven around a ghostlike city in Toyota SUVs and given a wide berth by the few other cars; people on sidewalks stared straight ahead. Our meetings with foreign ministry officials were tightly controlled affairs, set inside large marble halls and directed by interpreters, although two diplomats spoke English (when they chose to). I think North Korea’s nuclear program is quite limited, maybe capable of producing eight bombs at some distant date.”
“What’s It Like?” is a collection of first-person accounts from local people doing extraordinary things. Submit your own personal story for consideration for a future issue. E-mail jwood@marinmagazine.com for guidelines.