F or Robert Gawlitza, the morning of Nov. 25 began just like any other. He arrived for work at the Circle K he managed in north Phoenix, preparing for what he figured would be another in a series of routine days with the company. He’d worked for Circle K on and off since 2009, at locations all across the Valley and in Las Vegas. After a while in the employment of the gas station and convenience store giant, you’ve just about seen it all. On the way in, one of his employees sent him a news report: A winning lottery ticket, worth $12.8 million, had been generated at this store. Huh, he thought to himself, that’s neat. In his 17 years with the company, his store had never sold a ticket that had won such a big jackpot. To play such a minor role in someone’s life- changing payday — a footnote to a footnote, given he wasn’t working when the ticket was printed — would make for a fun thing to mention in conversation. Instead, Gawlitza has found himself at the center of one of the most intriguing lottery controversies in Arizona history. The winning ticket had been printed at his store, but it hadn’t been sold. It had fallen behind the counter the day before and wasn’t discovered until that morning. The ticket still constituted a legal wager — vendors pay the Arizona Lottery for each ticket they print — but the question of its ownership was unresolved. Gawlitza took a stab at resolving it. Because lottery rules prohibit vendors from buying tickets while at work, he clocked out and changed out of his uniform. He bought the ticket for $10 and signed the back of it, adding the names of two employees with whom he planned to split the money. He then texted his district manager to explain what he’d done and confirm that he could do it. He received an affirmative response. “We ain’t quitting the store or you,” he texted his district manager. “We just are not broke anymore.” Eight months later, Gawlitza’s big payday has yet to arrive. Within hours, Circle K had changed its tone, peppering him with questions about how he had bought the ticket and sending someone to confiscate it. He hasn’t seen it since. But he has seen a pink slip, with Circle K firing him two months after he bought the ticket, which they contend he essentially purchased while working. He’s also seen a court summons — in February, weeks after firing Gawlitza for supposedly buying the ticket while on the clock, Circle K filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court to determine the ticket’s rightful owner. Gawlitza was named as a defendant. Gawlitza has secured himself a lawyer and is pressing his ownership claim, insisting that he followed Circle K policy and did nothing wrong. He’s also wondered if his $10 bought him much more than he bargained for. He’s seen his name appear in news reports and seen his motives questioned on social media. He lost his job and, at one point, was led to believe that he might go to jail. The ordeal has put a strain on his wife and two kids. He worries he’s sullied his family name. For months, he weathered the saga in silence, secretly hoping it would go away. But Gawlitza is now ready to talk. Earlier this month, his lawyer submitted his first filing in the court case over the ticket, which includes a counterclaim against Circle K. (Circle K declined to answer questions for this story, citing pending litigation.) A day later, at his attorney’s central Phoenix office, Gawlitza gave a series of interviews to news outlets, including Phoenix New Times. It’s the first time since the controversy broke that the public has heard his version of events. “I just want to get the other side of this story,” Gawlitza said, “so they can make a full assessment of this and make a true choice of how they feel.” ‘Why tell me it was OK?’ Whatever one might think of his maneuvers to buy what he knew was a winning lottery ticket, Gawlitza doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of an invet- erate schemer. He’s 44 years old and soft-spoken, bookish and bespectacled. Though he certainly hasn’t abandoned his claim to the ticket and the $12.8 million it prom- ises, at several points throughout a half- hour interview, he seemed just as eager to put the whole episode behind him as he is to come out on top. He insists that not once after buying the ticket — not even for a moment — did he think to himself, I’m rich! “I don’t like jumping ahead that far,” he said. Text messages included in his court filing both support that claim and read like ass-covering. In a message to his supervisor, sent alongside a screenshot of a news report showing his store had sold the winning ticket, Gawlitza pointedly asked if it was OK to clock out, change out of uniform and purchase a lottery ticket. Only after being told yes did Gawlitza reveal that he’d already done so, and that the ticket he’d purchased was the $12.8 million winner from the night before. “I ask because the winning ticket was sitting in my store and for the 12.8 million winner and that is what I just did,” he wrote. He then asked about the procedure for notifying Circle K. For the next few hours, Gawlitza told New Times, everything seemed fine. Then the tone shifted. Circle K now had lots of questions about his purchase — how the ticket had been printed, how he’d bought it. He offered to take it to the company’s Tempe headquarters, but was told in no uncertain terms to stay put. Someone would come to retrieve the ticket. Gawlitza said Circle K also sent someone to check if the store’s lottery machine had been tampered with. It hadn’t. Gawlitza began to get concerned. He’d put those coworkers’ names on the ticket to split the prize with them — one is a co-claimant in his court filing — and now he worried he’d placed them in a much different kind of jackpot. “I had all these different people who were going to be affected by this when I was told it was OK,” he said. “If it wasn’t OK, why tell me it was OK?” He’d only followed procedure, he says, and in more ways than one. Central to his claim is what Gawlitza said was an unwritten but strictly enforced Circle K policy that requires that, after lottery draw- ings, any printed-but-unsold lottery tickets be purchased at employees’ expense. Robert Gawlitza wants to clear his name after Circle K fired him for buying what he knew was a $12.8 million-winning lotto ticket. The money would be nice, too. >> p 14 Robert Gawlitza. (Itzia Crespo)
