Feeling ‘Like a Million’--or $87 Million

Their lives are a catalog of workaday hardships: One has a toddler in the hospital. Another lost her job, her husband and her son in a span of a few years. A mother of three told a friend as she left work, “Something’s got to change. I’ve got $1.50 in my pocket.”

She couldn’t have uttered that line more on cue if she were in a made-for-TV movie: Cut to workplace. Employees screaming and laughing and crying. You’ve won the lottery!

That was the real-life story for 13 employees of a Starbucks coffeehouse at La Brea Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard who will share an $87-million California SuperLotto Plus jackpot, the fourth largest in state history.

“I thought things like this happened to other people, not to me,” said Mary Ann Champaine, the 53-year-old Starbucks manager. She was her usual blur of energy Tuesday, serving coffee drinks, talking about her colleagues and customers as if they were her surrogate family.

These workers, who beat the 41 million-to-1 odds to win, are not college students earning extra money. For the most part, they are trying to support themselves and families on $7.50 to $10 an hour. The winners are a very Los Angeles blend, including blacks, Latinos, a Filipino American, a high school student, one Mexican immigrant and single parents--all stunned to find themselves Lotto winners.

They’re not quite millionaires, however.

Champaine, who bought the tickets, did not mark on the ticket whether she wanted the millions in a lump sum or a 26-year annuity. “I never expected to win,” she said. So the jackpot automatically gets paid out over 26 years.

When the amount is stretched out over 26 years and divided among 13 people, each of the winners will still get $167,307 for the first check. Annual individual payments will increase until each gets a final payment of $341,307 in the 26th year.

Their total take: $6,692,307 each. That’s before federal taxes.

Even before getting their checks--which will arrive in two to six weeks--they have become instant celebrities.

Their Mid-City Starbucks, in which Magic Johnson is an investor, is usually a mix of working-class coffee drinkers. On Tuesday, the cafe was suddenly overrun with TV cameras, Starbucks public relations officials and investment consultants, also hoping for some good luck.

Regular patrons were delighted for their servers. “It just couldn’t happen to better people,” said Craig Quinn, an aspiring screenwriter.

The Starbucks workers are a close-knit group; they seem to enjoy each other and their customers. “This place is like family,” said Quinn, who was working at his laptop on a screenplay about blues legend Robert Johnson. “Once they know you, they actually bring your coffee to your table.”

Champaine, the manager, provides much of the store’s heart and soul. During the bus strike, she picked up stranded employees and ferried them to work. Among her friends who heard the news of her good fortune was Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle Officer Patrick W. Beighley. He marched into the coffee shop early Tuesday and embraced the wiry grandmother. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s the sweetest thing on two feet,” he said.

It was Champaine’s idea to buy lottery tickets when Saturday’s jackpot swelled to $87 million. She’s not a gambler and played only occasionally. But this jackpot was too high to pass up. She organized workers into a pool, with each one contributing a dollar, and dashed to a nearby liquor store to buy 13 tickets.

“Without her, this would not have happened,” said one of the winners, Leah Coley.

Champaine even put in a couple of dollars for employees who weren’t working Saturday. (They have since paid her back, she said.)

Champaine picked the numbers on 11 of the tickets. The two others were Quick Picks, chosen by the lottery computer. It was one of the those Quick Pick tickets that yielded the winning numbers: 2, 14, 15, 36, 45, and a Mega number, 8. She didn’t even check to see if she had won until Monday, when a friend called to say the liquor store near her Starbucks had produced a winner. (L & E Liquor, will be awarded 0.5% of the jackpot, or $435,000.)

“It’s like a miracle,” Champaine said.

At a news conference Tuesday in Van Nuys, the winners were shy while answering questions.

“I feel like a million dollars,” said Rick Camat, 28.

Arely Gaytan, 27, mother of a 6-year old, Vanessa, said: “It’s all for my daughter. It’s all going to be for her and her education.”

The California lottery has been around long enough--about 15 years--for plenty of cautionary tales about lottery winners: Many either squandered their money or ended up as miserable as they were before their windfalls.

“People who expect too much of the experience were disappointed,” said Michael Birnbaum, a Cal State Fullerton professor who received a National Science Foundation grant in 1994 to conduct research on past winners of the lottery’s Big Spin. “People with more realistic expectations were more happy.”

So far, the still-astonished Starbucks winners have the barest of expectations. Those without cars, for example, plan to buy them. All of the workers said they would continue at Starbucks, at least in the short run.

“I’m hoping to start a business,” said Camat. “If I invest the money it might multiply.”

The youngest winner is Keana Essex, 16, a junior at Alexander Hamilton High School, who wants to use her earnings for college. She plans to be a doctor.

Champaine, the eldest of the group, broke down in tears as she talked to waves of reporters in her Starbucks shop. She was in her green apron, recounting how her husband died of cancer last year, how she lost her job when retailer Fedco went under last year and how her son, 24, was shot and killed several years ago.

Starbucks became her home as well as her job. She is something of a mother figure here, offering advice and listening to stories. She is still thinking about what she will do with the money. She may take her 70-year-old mother on a cruise. First, the Indiana native wants to buy a dining room set.

“I’m not going to go out and buy a house or a car,” she said. “My little Corolla takes me back and forth just fine.”

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Times staff writer David Pierson contributed to this story.