The Smiths of Westminster : It’s Still Sandwiches for Lotto Millionaires

Ron and Linda Smith, Orange County’s newest Lotto 6/49 millionaires, dined Monday at their comfortable Westminster home on ham and bologna sandwiches. He had a pickle and milk on the side. She sipped a Sprite.

They may have won one-third of the world-record, $61.98-million Lotto jackpot, and were just hours away from facing dozens of reporters at a news conference in Los Angeles. But, no sir, they weren’t going to change their ways.

“I’m going to take it slow,” said 45-year-old Ron Smith, whose share of the winnings amounts to $20.66 million. “I’m not going to go out and spend all the money.”

But for millionaires, some change may be inevitable.

For the first time in recent family memory, Smith was without one of his T-shirts. Instead, he sported an open-collar, short-sleeve shirt with blue slacks and elephant-skin cowboy boots dyed turquoise, prompting some teasing from his wife and two children.

And for only the second time in 23 years, Smith stayed home from his job as an oil field supervisor.

Even the morning was different. When he went out and bought the Monday papers, which had his picture splashed across the front pages, well, what’s a nice guy to do?

“People at the store were saying, ‘Let me touch you, let me touch you,’ ” Smith said, smiling. “I let ‘em.” Next, he was applauded at the lottery district office in Orange when he turned in the winning ticket.

Smith was one of 41 elated California lottery players, including participants in two pools of winners in San Diego and Sacramento counties, who luxuriated Monday in planning what they will do with their shares. It was the first time in the 2-year-old state lottery that pool players shared in the big jackpot, according to lottery spokesman Bob Taylor. And the situation presented the winners with an interesting dilemma: how will they equally share their winnings?

“They have to work out their own official or unofficial contractual arrangement because only one person can sign the back of a winning ticket,” Taylor said. “It’s probably wise to get an attorney and draw it up before they start receiving the money.”

The state will award the winnings to the person who signed the ticket, he pointed out.

The three winning tickets in Saturday’s drawing were signed by Smith, and by Colleen Peach-Van Horn, 36, an intensive-care nurse from Fallbrook in San Diego County, and Frank T. Kopita, 42, a Sears service representative in Sacramento.

Smith was the sole winner of a one-third share. The other two-thirds will go to Peach-Van Horn, representing 13 fellow Fallbrook Hospital workers and a friend, who each chipped in $40 to buy $600 in tickets, and to Kopita, representing 24 other Sears service workers.

The first of 20 payments to the winners is expected to be made in about 10 days, Taylor said.

Smith will receive an initial payment of $826,400 after taxes, and similar annual payments for each of the next 19 years.

The Fallbrook 15 will each receive $1,101,867 in 20 annual payments of $55,093. The Sacramento 25 each won $826,400 and will get after-tax payments of $33,056 each year for 20 years.

“It’s just super that we’ve had our first pool jackpot winners in 2 years after a streak of 136 jackpot winners,” Lottery director Chon Gutierrez said Monday.

So far, according to Lotto officials, more than $1.5 billion has been paid in California’s lottery.

For the Smiths of Westminster, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Since their winning became public, they have suffered through at least 200 unsolicited calls, from people pitching everything from $150,000 Civil War Bibles to insurance, stocks, Corvette sports cars--even furniture.

So when the telephone rang late Monday afternoon, Linda Smith, 41, answered cautiously: “Hello?”

This time, though, it was a friend. But Linda didn’t have time to talk. “I’ve got a limo outside waiting . . . to take us to the Biltmore (Hotel) in Los Angeles,” she screamed into the mouthpiece.

Then they were out the door and into their waiting limo, which had been hired, courtesy of the state Lottery Commission, as was the public relations firm that had arranged their evening news conference in Los Angeles.

“Is that what you bought?” a neighbor yelled from across the street. Another neighbor was taking snapshots and waving. Ron Smith smiled, shrugged his shoulders and rolled up the smoked-glass window.

For one Westminster family, life had changed for good.