ANAHEIM : New Lotto Odds No Match for Lucky 37

Question: What is $6.1 million divided by 37 divided by 20, with a ratio of 23 million to 1?

Answer: One winning Lotto ticket--or, as Lotto winner Richard F. Krenz said, “just kind of money from heaven.”

Krenz, 55, is one of 37 employees at the Anaheim branch of Rockwell International Corp. who threw $52 into a pot for last Saturday’s Lotto drawing and came away with a $6.1-million pot of gold.

No one became a millionaire in the multimillion-dollar drawing--split 37 ways, the ticket is worth $164,864.86 each, or about $8,243.24 a year for 20 years. Nevertheless, there were “a bunch of happy people” walking around Rockwell’s offices Monday, Krenz said.

“I just said, ‘You got to be kidding’ ” when fellow employees told Krenz the good news, he said. “The farthest thing from my mind was to say we won a $6-million jackpot.”

The winning ticket, which Krenz said was purchased at a store in his hometown of Yorba Linda, was the only one in the state and the first under the state’s new “Lotto 6-53” game, which requires players to pick six numbers out of 53. The new game increased the odds of winning to 1 in 23 million, from the 1-in-14 million odds in the now-defunct “Lotto 6-49” game.

Krenz, a “vendor contact” at Rockwell who acts as a liaison between suppliers and the firm’s purchasing department, said the 37-player pool has a state lottery computer to thank for bucking the higher odds in the new game. Unable to decide on six numbers, the players opted for “Quick Pick” tickets with numbers picked at random by the computer.

As luck would have it, the computer spit out the numbers 10, 18, 27, 34, 35 and 46 on one of the tickets. Krenz said each player kicked in $1 for a ticket, and three $5 jackpots from previous draws added an extra $15 worth of tickets.

The players, Krenz said, represented “many walks of life, from engineering to secretaries to material clerks.” The pool was formed by “about 15 people” four months ago when a Lotto jackpot topped $50 million and the idea of a weekly pool caught on, eventually rising to the 37 players who participated in Saturday’s drawing, Krenz said.

While none of the players will get rich quick from their winnings, Krenz said the jackpot was a welcome windfall.

“One of the gals (in the group) is a newlywed, and one of the players was a brand-new daddy a week ago.”

Krenz, who said he is a month away from retirement, plans to use his share of the Lotto loot to “make my retirement years a little more enjoyable.”

The winnings “will take care of a vacation of some sort, or a trip around the United States,” Krenz said. “We’re trying to make plans to visit Europe, and probably see Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, where my wife is from. I’d just kind of like to go and enjoy the scenery.”