A $750 Gamble Pays Off With a $1.5-Million Home

Paging Dr. Mildred Rey-Monroy: A huge prize is waiting for you. When you return from Japan, could you claim your $1.5-million home?

Rey-Monroy, a pediatrician in Paramount, snagged the top reward Saturday in the Palos Verdes Art Center’s fundraising raffle: a four-bedroom, ranch-style casa with views of Santa Catalina Island.

The doctor is on vacation until Tuesday, her medical assistant said, an ocean away from raffle organizers and nosy newspaper reporters.

Rey-Monroy purchased five $150 tickets for the raffle, vying with participants from 40 states who bought 20,000 tickets for a shot at the 2,800-square-foot house.

The raffle, in its third year, offered a gamble on a $1.5-million white house in the South Bay equestrian community of Rolling Hills Estates. Its description reads like a Realtor’s dream: three fireplaces, three-car garage, hardwood floors, redwood deck with spa and a large yard with citrus trees hemmed with a fence and wrought-iron gate.

But there’s a catch.

If Rey-Monroy takes the home, she must turn over 28% of its value to the government -- nearly $420,000, about the median home price in Los Angeles County. Or she could opt out of the house and claim $1 million in cash, forking over about $280,000 to the tax folks.

Doctor, we’re waiting. You have until May 27 to make up your mind.

Last year’s winner, Bhavesh “Bobby” Bhagat, rents out his pricey abode. The winner before him, John Moungian, pocketed the cash.

The people who bet on the drawing -- one person hoarded 34 tickets -- don’t dawdle on such complications. They simply dream of owning a plot with an ocean view.

It “is the epitome of Southern California,” said Michael Mabon, 41, who lives with his wife, Patricia, and her mother in a two-bedroom Bellflower apartment. “You can look at the ocean for free -- when the sun’s setting, when the sun’s rising.”

The Mabons bought two tickets and stood with more than 100 hopefuls at a Rolling Hills Estates shopping center.

Two men rotated a giant plastic drum of blue tickets, and the art center’s accountant fished for winners.

“In our minds, $300 is not a big investment,” Mabon said. “Three hundred dollars is affordable -- a house is not.”

He and his wife left empty-handed.

The raffle idea came to the center with director Robert A. Yassin, who had used such a fundraiser at the Tucson Museum of Art in 1992.

Its directors were wary at first, he said: What if no one bought tickets and the museum got stuck with a house? The Tucson fundraiser was a smash.

Its South Bay spinoff has netted the Palos Verdes Art Center about $1 million each time. Past proceeds allowed the nonprofit group to fix the roof of its headquarters. This year’s take will probably be used for a new facility.

Ticket sales for the 2005 event totaled $3 million.

One donation came from Christina Birnbaum, who drove to the shopping center with her husband and their two children from Wildomar in Riverside County.

Along the way, Birnbaum couldn’t help daydreaming about the possibilities.

“You know: what the house would be like, who would get what bedroom. We saw the school and I told my daughter, ‘That would be your school,’ ” said Birnbaum, 35, whose family lives in a three-bedroom home.

Her husband was skeptical. But Birnbaum’s tarot card reader had said money would turn up near June, and it did.

The couple pocketed $300, one of 199 monetary prizes the art center awarded.

“We’d rather win the house,” Michael Birnbaum admitted.

At 11:56 a.m., Yassin announced the top prize winner. The hopefuls clapped politely and emptied their folding chairs.

Yassin dialed a cellphone. “Hello?”

He tried Rey-Monroy again and left a message. “She has won our raffle. Please call the art center ...”

The hubbub reminded organizers of last year, when it took three phone calls to convince Bhagat, the winner, that they weren’t his friends pretending he had scored a swank home.

Doctor, it’s not a joke. Party at your new place?