Truck Driver, Student Split Big Lotto Pot

A 20-year-old Capistrano Beach community college sophomore and a Riverside truck driver will divide a $39-million Lotto jackpot, the second largest in California Lottery history, officials announced Thursday.

Christene E. Lentz and Robert K. Barnett claimed their prizes Thursday morning after the winning numbers were selected Wednesday night in a mechanized drawing delayed for half an hour by a technical glitch.

Each winner will receive 20 annual payments of $783,200, which represents the $19.58 million minus federal income taxes, said Bob Taylor, a lottery spokesman. By winning the jackpot they beat odds of about 14 million to one.

“I’m still in shock,” Barnett said late Thursday evening, after returning home from San Diego. He had driven there in the morning to pick up his wife, who is being treated at Scripps Hospital for a degenerative muscle disease from which she has suffered for the last six years.

“Hopefully, I can help out my family and enjoy it also,” he said. “I don’t really know how to handle this. . . . It’s taken a while to sink in.”

Barnett purchased his winning Quick Pick ticket Wednesday, stopping at a convenience store on the way home from work, where he spent the last $4 in his wallet on four lottery tickets.

“I played a hunch. I play the hunches a lot of times,” he said, explaining that he spends about $10 a week playing Lotto 6/49.

He said one of his first thoughts upon realizing he had won was: “I just hope somebody else wins some of it too, because that’s just too much money for one person.”

Impromptu Party

Barnett’s daughter, Julie Lynch, 25, said her father threw an impromptu family party to celebrate Wednesday night. “We toasted and toasted and toasted. . . . We thanked the Lord and all that good stuff. We were up until all hours of the night, and (my father) was shaking so bad he couldn’t even write his name on the back of the ticket.”

“We just couldn’t believe it,” said Lynch, one of Barnett’s three children.

Barnett said he hasn’t yet decided how he will spend the money, and plans to continue his $17-an-hour job at Alumex aluminum plant in Riverside at least for the time being. “There are some loose ends to be tied up, and I didn’t want to make any rash decisions right at that moment.”

On Thursday, after turning in his winning ticket at the Riverside lottery office, Barnett stopped off at the plant and picked up his weekly paycheck.

Lentz, a theater arts major attending Saddleback College, purchased her winning ticket and three others at a San Clemente liquor store Wednesday afternoon.

Lentz declined to talk about her win Thursday, but her mother, Joyce Lentz, said Christene was at home reading when the drawing was televised. She learned of her win when her 14-year-old sister showed her the numbers she had copied off the television.

Sought Confirmation

Suspicious that her sister might be teasing her, Christene Lentz immediately called the lottery’s 24-hour verification hot line, Joyce Lentz said.

“I had gone to bed early and was already asleep when I heard this loud scream,” she added. “Then I heard Christene bounding down the stairs, crying out, ‘I won, I won, I swear I won.’ ”

The family, Lentz said, stayed up all night discussing how “our life will change.”

Lentz said Christene, who has played Lotto frequently since she turned the minimum age of 18, has no immediate plans for the money other than replacing her car, which has 100,000 miles on it.

As for the future, Lentz said Christene plans to graduate from Saddleback and go on to a four-year university. Her goal is to teach high school drama.

“I told her she could now buy her own theater,” Lentz said.

The winning numbers Wednesday were 25, 14, 19, 33, 46, 41. The bonus number was 37. The bonus number is used for lesser prizes.

This week’s prize was second only to the $51.4 million won June 4 by Shelby Carroll, 53, of Vacaville and Randy Pennington, 26, of Sacramento. That was the largest state Lotto jackpot in U.S. history.

Machine Failure

State officials held a news conference Thursday in Sacramento to explain how the machine that selects the winning numbers had failed for the first time in the 22 months since Lotto 6/49 began, blaming the malfunction on human error.

The machine works this way: The 49 individually numbered balls are stored in a rack at the top. When the machine is activated, they are supposed to drop into a mixing chamber where they whirl around. Six randomly selected numbers then are dropped into a chute. These are the winners. Then a seventh ball is dropped as a bonus number.

On Wednesday, a technician improperly fitted the rack on the machines and not all of the balls dropped into the mixing chamber, Lottery Director Chon Gutierrez told reporters. By the time technicians noticed the problem and stopped the machine, one ball, No. 33, had dropped into the chute.

The drawing was declared invalid, the machine was reset and another drawing was conducted about half an hour after the scheduled time of 7:58 p.m.