2 Lotto Players Use Birth Data to Win $15.5-Million

A Pomona machinist and a Sacramento college bookstore secretary whose lucky numbers were the ages and birth years of family members split a $15.5-million lotto prize, a lottery spokesman said Monday.

The two winners will each collect $7.94 million, spread over 20 years. Annual checks will amount to $317,000 after taxes, California Lottery spokesman John Schade said.

James G. McKenney, 50, a machinist from Pomona, told lottery officials that he used combinations of his year of birth and the year a son was born when picking the winning numbers. He bought his ticket shortly before the Lotto 6/49 drawing Saturday evening at a 7-Eleven store in Diamond Bar, Schade said, adding that McKenney asked that no further information be released.

Catheryn Eckman, 46, the other winner, said she will keep her job as a secretary at the bookstore at California State University, Sacramento. Eckman, who bought her ticket Saturday at a Circle K market, explained her numbers this way: She is 46, born in 1940; her husband is 37, born in 1949; and her daughter is 20, born in 1966, for which she used a 6.

The winning numbers were 37, 6, 40, 20, 49, 46. The bonus number was 33.

“I’m buying my mom and my daughter Mustangs this afternoon,” she said at a press conference at state lottery headquarters in Sacramento. “We’re going to our financial adviser . . . and we’re going to do a lot of traveling.”

Jim Eckman, her husband and a state water resources engineer, said his first reaction was “rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms . . . probably like being in love the first time.”