Richard Mendoza was playing the slot machines at Buffalo Thunder Casino on Monday afternoon.

He lost $40 on one machine in a half hour, then moved to another, where he placed nine bets and was $6 down when the machine's lights began to flash the figure $288,960.

"I started shaking," he said. "I looked around and there was nobody around except for one guy. I said, 'Hey, could you go get somebody?' ...

"It all seems like a dream when you first win. You can't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I was like, 'Wow.' "

The 48-year-old Santa Fe native said it took one to two hours for a technician from Bally Technology to drive up from Albuquerque to make sure the "Quarter Million$ Instant Fortune" machine hadn't malfunctioned and that no one had tampered with its program.

Then casino officials made arrangements to wire the payoff to Mendoza's account. He said that it arrived the next day.

Mendoza said he doesn't go to casinos that often, but went Monday because his mother, Laura Mendoza, asked him to take her. His largest previous win was about $1,200.

He said he plans to hire an accountant to help him figure out what he will owe in income taxes. He figures the state and federal government's share will be about 40 percent.

Then he plans to pay off the mortgage on his house on the southeast side of Santa Fe and, possibly, buy a new car, but he has no plans to leave his job of 18 years as an electrician at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"It's a lot, but it's not that much money," he said. "Nobody's really come to me to borrow anything yet, but I've had a few jokes at work."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.