A receipt, hope for the Bills, and a streak: How these 3 Long Islanders made it to Super Bowl LIX

One has been making the pilgrimage for 36 straight years. Another is crossing an item off his bucket list. And the third has never seen a live professional football game in her life.

The Super Bowl seems a good enough way to start.

Of the over 70,000 fans expected to be at Superdome this weekend in New Orleans to see Kansas City defend its title against the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, at least three will be Long Islanders with very different journeys to the big game.

None, though, are quite as unique as the one experienced by Orquidia Baez of Bay Shore. The 29-year-old mother of two was with her kids at the Lindenhurst Applebee’s last month when she noticed her check came with an invitation to join a national sweepstakes for two tickets and all expenses paid for a Super Bowl weekend visit to Louisiana.

She thought nothing of it, signed up, and received an email last week.

“I completely forgot about it,” Baez told Newsday in a phone interview. “I was like, yeah, right.”

But after some research, it certainly looked like the prize was legitimate. Her boyfriend, Chris Green, a Vikings fan, “was going crazy,” she said. “He’s happy and he definitely wasn’t expecting any of that.”

The choice to pick a team came pretty organically: Green’s brother is an Eagles fan, so he’ll be pulling for the Birds. And Baez’s allegiance was decided by her 8-year-old daughter.

“She’s going for [Kansas City] because of the Taylor Swift situation,” Baez said, laughing. “So I’m choosing [them] because of my daughter.”

She says this will count as both her boyfriend’s birthday gift and Valentine’s Day gift, and no wonder: As of Friday, tickets on Ticketmaster started at over $3,000 and went up to $20,000. A Google search shows local hotels going for thousands of dollars a night, and Roslyn’s Richard Schwartz, who will be in New Orleans forhis 36th straight Super Bowl, estimated his own room at being around $800 to $1,000 a night, though he uses rewards points to book.

But all that is worth it if you’re finally crossing off what Kevin O’Connor called a “bucket list item.”

O’Connor, 46, of Babylon, is a lifelong Jets fan with friendly ties to the Bills Mafia, and was hoping to see newly crowned MVP Josh Allen lead his team to its first Super Bowl victory. Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City (again) had other ideas, but O’Connor fully intends to make the best of his first Super Bowl experience.

“As far as who I’m rooting for, the obvious answer is my [Super Bowl betting pool] boxes,” he said in an email while en route to New Orleans.

O’Connor, who now does ticketing for Broadway, “started working for the Mets in the late 1990s and got to know the Mahomes family pretty well” when dad Pat Mahomes Sr. was a pitcher for the team.

“I remember young Patrick Mahomes often running around on the field during batting practice. So if one team has to win, I guess it would be pretty cool to be there to see Patrick be the first to three-peat [a Super Bowl]. I’m looking forward to a few days with a wild crowd.”

He got a relative bargain for a pair of tickets at $1,800 total in Section 310. The hotel was another $800.

As of Thursday, Schwartz still didn’t have his ticket, but he wasn’t worried.

“Usually, there’s only been two or three times I’ve gotten down [to the Super Bowl] with tickets in hand,” he said in a phone interview.

Schwartz, who owns luggage and backpacks manufacturing company Premium Bag, paid $3,450 for a ticket last year.

He began his streak in 1989 after winning his fantasy football league. When he got down to Miami for Super Bowl XXIII, he helped his uncle run a Super Bowl media tennis tournament. That started a stretch of around five years of helping his uncle and attending the slew of events that occur the week prior to the game.

“After the Giants won [in Super Bowl XXV], I made the vow to go every year because I’m a Giants fan,” he said.

He’s picked up plenty of friends and connections along the way, which help him keep his goal going.

“I love football,” he said. “When I was a kid growing up in Oceanside, I used to have tackle football parties . . . I used to draw football helmets in school. So the fact that I got to go to one Super Bowl was a dream come true. Now I’m going to 36.”

He’s already booked his room for San Francisco next year. He credits his wife, Greta, a cancer survivor, for supporting his dream, and his business for allowing him the flexibility to attend.

“I really just feel real gratitude for being here,” he said. “I’m so lucky. Every day we wake up, we’re lucky. So, it’s a relative thing . . .

“I feel very blessed to have seen such great football.”

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.