Friday, June 7, 1996

Snyder group wins half of $35 million jackpot

By LORETTA FULTON and ALINE PARKS
Staff Writers

SNYDER - Nineteen employees of BJ Services Inc. struck it rich Wednesday night, but not in the oil field.

They did it the easy way - they bought 110 Quik Picks for Wednesday night's $35 million Texas Lotto drawing and won, along with another person in San Antonio.

The Snyder bunch will split $17.5 million. Most will receive $28,000 annually for the next 20 years. Some of the investors will receive more because they bought more than one share.

The company employs about 50 people, but not all chose to play. One person who didn't get in on the deal, district secretary Marsha Falls, was threatening to kick herself Thursday for not buying into the pool.

"I started to, but I didn't," she said.

The man responsible for purchasing the tickets, Leon Crenshaw, wasn't as caught up in the excitement as others, or perhaps was overcome by it.

"I think he's home sleeping," Falls said.

The group has purchased tickets five or six times over the past two years whenever the Lotto jackpot got to be exceptionally high, said Jim Halverson, facility supervisor.

The employees bought a total of 22 tickets with five sets of numbers each at Wes-T-Go Conoco No. 3 in Snyder. The store manager said Lotto commission representatives were there Thursday afternoon to confirm the purchase.

Halverson said the group has retained an attorney to represent them. The group will send two representatives to Austin for the check presentation, he said.

Halverson said everybody was excited about winning but nobody had made plans for spending the money.

The winning numbers were: 8, 13, 17, 28, 47 and 48.