14 autoworkers from Mich., Ohio win half of $97 million Powerball lottery jackpot

14 autoworkers from Mich., Ohio win Powerball

TOLEDO, Ohio — A group of Michigan autoworkers won a share of a Powerball jackpot, and one of them has already splurged on a piece of Detroit muscle — a new Corvette.

It also turns out the group picked the right guy to buy the lucky ticket, an Ohio man who had won a lottery jackpot before.

The ticket-buyer, longtime Chrysler worker William Shanteau, and 13 others who live in Michigan hold one of two winning tickets in last week’s $96.9 million Powerball drawing. They claimed their prize Monday and chose to take a lump-sum cash payment, worth about $25.1 million. After taxes, each autoworker gets $1.2 million.

Most of the winners work in the paint shop at a Chrysler plant in Detroit that makes Jeep Grand Cherokees.

Michigan — the epicenter of the U.S. auto industry — has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs during the past several years as plants have closed or cut back. Until recently, the state had been saddled with the nation’s highest unemployment rate every month for four straight years.

Shanteau, who’s a regular lottery player, won a $100,000 jackpot about six years ago, said Shirley Loofborow, the carryout owner who sold the ticket.

“He’s having a streak of good luck,” Loofborow said.

Shanteau lives close enough to her store near Toledo to walk in most days. He already bought a new Corvette and promised to buy his wife a new Jeep, Loofborow said.

He told her he had no plans to move or quit his job before retiring in about three years, she said.

Shanteau and at least one other winner plan to attend a news conference in Ohio on Thursday.

He told lottery officials that he had a dream the night before the drawing that they had won. He said when he went back to Loofborow’s store and verified he had a winner, “bells and whistles went off.”

The other winning ticket was sold in Montana.

Powerball, with drawings on Wednesdays and Saturdays, is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S Virgin Islands. Players pick six numbers from two different pools of numbers — five numbers from 1 to 59 and a Powerball from 1 to 39. Odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 195 million.

Its record jackpot is $365 million on Feb. 18, 2006.