Lotto Pool Winners Will Take Money and Split

Forty-one elated California lottery players, including participants in two pools of winners in San Diego and Sacramento counties, luxuriated Monday in planning what they will do with their shares of a world-record $61.98-million Lotto jackpot.

It was the first time in the 2-year-old state lottery that pool players shared in the big jackpot, lottery spokesman Bob Taylor said. The situation presented the winners with a interesting dilemma.

“They have to work out their own official, or unofficial, contractual arrangement, because only one person can sign the back of a winning ticket,” Taylor said. “It’s probably wise to get an attorney and draw it up before they start receiving the money.”

The three winning tickets in Saturday’s drawing were signed by Ron Smith, 45, of Westminster; Colleen Peach-Van Horn, 36, an intensive care nurse from Fallbrook, and Frank T. Kopita, 42, a Sears service representative in Sacramento. Each ticket was worth $20.66 million.

Smith was the sole winner of a one-third share. The other two-thirds will go to Peach-Van Horn, representing 13 fellow Fallbrook Hospital workers and a friend, and to Kopita, representing 24 other Sears service workers.

Smith will receive 20 annual payments of $826,400 after taxes. The Fallbrook 15 will each receive $1.1 million, paid in 20 annual payments of $55,093. The Sacramento 25 each won $826,400 and will get 20 payments of $33,056 each.

“I’m handing in my resignation (today),” Smith, a Shell Oil production foreman, announced at a Biltmore news conference. “For most of my life, I’ve lived from pay week to pay week, and seldom have I ever gambled. A big weekend for us, every once in a while, was taking the whole weekend in Las Vegas and spending $400--I mean including shows and everything. The next time I go to Vegas, I might take a thousand dollars.”

The family does not plan to move.

“We moved into our home 20 years ago,” Smith’s wife, Linda, 41, said. “We’ve remodeled, and all our friends are here.”

Jubilant members of the Fallbrook pool and their friends gathered at the San Diego Marriott Monday afternoon for a press conference punctuated with giddy cheers and laughter. They sipped champagne and arrived in six limousines. All said they planned to keep their jobs.

“They’re all quality people and we can’t afford to have them quit,” said Dr. John Piconi, a staff member at the 50-bed Fallbrook Hospital and also one of the winners.

Asked how it felt to be a millionaire, Jonathan Duff Stone said, “At $55,000 a year, it’s not enough to make us independently wealthy, but it is certainly enough to spend a couple of weeks in Barbados.”

In Sacramento, Kopita’s group planned to hold a press conference today.

Times staff writers Lonn Johnston in Orange County and Leslie Wolf in San Diego County contributed to this article.