Retired auto worker, 2 children claim $314M Powerball lottery jackpot
Posted: 9/12/2007 5:32:00 PM
A retired auto worker and his two adult children claimed a $314 million Powerball jackpot Monday after waiting two weeks to step forward.
"I know the world is going to turn upside down," said David Coterel, 65, of Riverside, Ohio. Coterel's daughter, Lynn Hiles, 46, said she has quit her job as a postal worker in Dayton, Ohio. Her 42-year-old brother, David Coterel, recently took a buyout from his job at an auto parts plant.
Neither has any children, and their mother, Dorothy, died of cancer three years ago.
The family decided to take the cash option on the prize from the Aug. 25 drawing, meaning they will collect $145,985,099 before taxes, Hoosier Lottery executive director Kathryn Densborn said.
The elder Coterel, 65, who is retired from General Motors, bought the quick-pick ticket the afternoon of the drawing.
"I lost it," he said of learning he had the winning ticket. "I'm an emotional person, but I really lost it."
The winning ticket bearing the numbers 2, 8, 23, 29, 35 and Powerball 19 was bought at a Speedway convenience store in Richmond, along the Indiana-Ohio state line about 100 kilometres east of Indianapolis.
The first person he called was his daughter, who quit her job as a nightshift postal worker in Dayton two days later.
Coterel Jr., who took a buyout from his job as a machine repairman at a Delphi auto parts plant but continued as a temporary worker, quit his job a day after his sister left hers.
"The hardest part was a lack of sleep," the younger Coterel said. "You lay down and your mind races: What am I going to do? What am I going to do? There's a lot of questions."
This afternoon, Hiles and Coterel Jr. had some thoughts about how they would spend the money, but the elder Coterel said he still was waiting for inspiration.
"Right now, I have no idea," he said. "But I'm sure something is going to come up."
The store where the winning ticket was sold is about five kilometres on U.S. 40 from another Speedway store that sold the winning ticket for a $295.7 million Powerball jackpot to a group of 13 co-workers from a factory in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in July 1998.
The 1998 jackpot was the largest of its kind to that point. Last month's jackpot is the fourth-largest in the 22-year history of the multistate Powerball game.
Powerball is played in 29 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The record jackpot was $365 million won by eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant in February 2006.
Source: Wire Reports, Lottery Post Staff
