26 Fla. Golf Club Employees Are in the Green After Lotto Win

Twenty-six employees of the Bent Pine Golf Club, who have spent years serving meals, washing dishes and tending to the needs of members, suddenly can afford to join the club.

Each chipped $2 into a pool to buy lottery tickets last week and came away with the lone winning ticket in Saturday’s $65-million Florida Lotto drawing.

“I’ve lived on the street all my life. I’ve never had nothing,” 23-year-old waitress Kathy Wilson said with a smile Tuesday. “This is a gift.”

Just last week, Wilson, a single mother of four, was scraping together change for gas money to get to work. Now she plans to buy a house and take her children to Disney World. Despite living just an hour south of Orlando, she’s never been able to afford the trip.

Club employees have been pitching in $1 twice a week for five years to buy tickets. None of the 26 winners--including a secretary, valet, an assistant golf pro and a florist who often performs work for Bent Pine--has quit since learning during Sunday’s lunch rush that they’d struck it rich.

But the size of the prize has been somewhat distracting.

“What’s burning?” Wilson asked in the club kitchen Tuesday while turning in an order for clam chowder.

“It’s the rolls,” answered line cook Rick Havey, 41, while helping prepare the special of the day, chicken with biscuits.

The workers, who range in age from 19 to 51, take home an average of $250 each week. They will now decide whether to take a onetime $32.1-million payment or split the jackpot over 30 years.

Either way, they’ll be able to afford the club’s $25,000 lifetime membership fee.