Hoosier Lotto Pool at Anderson Delphi Plant Saves Best for Last – Wins $9 million Jackpot
Nine Delphi coworkers win Hoosier Lotto jackpot on their factory pool’s final drawing!!
INDIANAPOLIS – Some may call it fate, irony or destiny, but the nine Delphi coworkers who split a $9 million Hoosier Lotto jackpot simply call it great timing. The nine men, eight of whom were faced with the decision of retiring or transferring by June 30, 2006 after Delphi announced plans to close its Anderson plant, were part of a factory pool that faithfully played Hoosier Lotto dating back to its inaugural drawing (then known as Lotto Cash) on May 5, 1990. Around that date, Dick Quinn purchased the group’s first tickets and on July 1, 2006 he would purchase the group’s last tickets, one of which would turn out to be the windfall they had waited for all these years.
“After 16 years we were going to have to stop playing because everybody here was being forced to either transfer or retire – so this really was our last chance,” said Quinn. “We had matched 5 of 6 once and 4 of 6 quite a few times, but this is just unbelievable.
Quinn had managed the pool over the past 16 years, buying $50 worth of tickets per week plus as many extra tickets he could purchase with the group’s winnings from the previous week. It would be one of these extra purchases that matched all six numbers for the July 1 Hoosier Lotto drawing. The men claimed their prize this afternoon at Hoosier Lottery Headquarters in Indianapolis, opting to take the cash option worth $3.7 million. Each winner received an equal share of $370,000 before taxes, except Quinn who received $740,000. Quinn had been paying an extra share each week for the last six months after another coworker opted out of the pool.
“Dick has been taking our money for years and never gave a cent of it back until this,” said coworker Nicholas Gray, who joked that many of his fellow pool members started to wonder if Dick was secretly keeping the money.
The group’s windfall made everyone’s ultimatum of retiring or transferring a little easier. Only one man, Ralph Flesher, who at 50 years old is the youngest in the group, chose to transfer and will continue working beyond January 1 of next year. Seven others have either retired or will retire when Anderson’s Delphi plant ceases operations at the end of the year. One group member, Jeff Fisher, who stayed in the pool after leaving Delphi several years ago, recently retired from General Motors in Indianapolis.
“You see folks on TV all the time winning these sort of prizes and you wonder what kind of people they are,” said coworker Richard Howard. “I can assure everyone that these are all a bunch of good guys who work hard and are wonderful people.”
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