Near-Record Lottery Jackpot Is Split 9 Ways

Gamblers from San Diego to Milpitas celebrated their share in nine winning lotto tickets Thursday but, with so many winners, the near-record $56.34-million jackpot was carved into prizes of routine size.

Each holder, or holders, of a Lotto 6/49 ticket with all six correct numbers out of the field of 49 won $6.2 million, said California Lottery spokesman John Schade.

The prizes will be paid in annual installments of about $250,000 after taxes over 20 years--a little more than would be received by a single winner of the game’s normal jackpot of about $5 million. The estimated jackpot for Saturday is $5 million.

At least one group shares one of the winning tickets, reducing their individual take still further. Twenty friends in a San Diego office of Pacific Bell who pooled their money came up with one of the winning tickets in the Wednesday night drawing. Splitting the prize 20 ways works out to about $12,500 each for 20 years, after taxes.

“Last night, I made a lot of plans for the $110,000 a year I thought we’d be getting,” said one of the San Diego winners, Rick Kruger. “Driving to work this morning, I heard on the radio there were nine winning tickets, so I started computing in my head, ‘Let’s see, from $110,000 to $12,000. I’ve got to call my wife and tell her not to quit her job.’ ”

Another winning ticket was purchased in San Diego and two in Los Angeles, Schade said. The other winning tickets were bought in Milpitas, Pomona, Baker, Hesperia and Sherman Oaks, he said.

The lottery was still in the process of verifying the winners Thursday afternoon, Schade said.

Two Northern California men took an expensive chance at the huge lotto jackpot by buying more than 20,000 tickets. They failed to win the big one.

Jerry Therault and an unidentified neighbor put down $20,075 for quick-pick tickets--those on which a computer picks the numbers--at the Village Bottle Shop in Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County. There were no jackpot winners in Scotts Valley.

Checking Numbers

It was unclear whether Therault and his neighbor had winning tickets for lesser amounts. He and his wife, Mary-Ann, had neighbors over Thursday night to help check numbers on the piles of lotto tickets.

More than 66 million $1 tickets were purchased since last Saturday by gamblers hoping to beat the one-in-14-million odds of winning the jackpot.

There were 37 tickets with five of six numbers plus the bonus number. Each of those tickets is worth $190,611, Schade said. Fifteen of those tickets were purchased in Northern California and 22 in Southern California.

In the no-bonus five of six category, 1,494 winners won $2,432. In the four of six category 74,055 players each won $44, and 1,286,909 players will collect $5 dollars apiece for picking three correct numbers.

The winning numbers picked in a televised drawing were 2, 32, 21, 11, 28, 19 and the bonus number was 27.