Winning isn't everything
Big lottery prize winners try to maintain perspective
Marc L'Heureux doesn't subscribe to the ''money-changes-everything" philosophy.
Nine months after winning $4 million on a lottery scratch ticket, the Newburyport father of three still climbs out of bed before dawn on weekdays to work at a company that cleans up biohazardous waste. L'Heureux, 39, still lives in the same house and is still married to the same woman. He is rethinking, however, the wisdom of keeping the same phone number.
A neighbor who won $4 million four years ago on a scratch ticket from the same Newburyport convenience store -- ''lucky neighborhood," L'Heureux said -- warned about being hounded with calls about his lottery winnings.
''He said a lot of people will come out of the woodwork," L'Heureux said. And they have, especially callers offering cruises, cars, and trips to Las Vegas in what sound to L'Heureux like sketchy business deals.
Purchased with high hopes and big dreams, lucky lottery tickets can ease financial anxieties, say recent and past winners. But the windfall, they say, can also destroy privacy, strain relationships, and, yes, bring unwanted relatives to the doorstep. The winnings, for some, have been fleeting. One local family that hit one of the state's largest Megabucks jackpots 21 years ago has little left.
Hoping to avoid ending up as a lottery horror story, L'Heureux said, he hired a financial consultant, mapped out an investment plan for his 20 annual checks, and sticks to the program.
''Money," he said, ''doesn't last forever."
L'Heureux, who will receive about $140,000 a year after taxes, has allowed himself and his family a few treats: He took his children to Disney World during spring vacation; he is remodeling his house; and he handed $500 to the convenience store clerk who sold him his winning ticket. Not that he plays much anymore.
''Once in a blue moon," L'Heureux said. ''I was lucky enough. That's it."
But hordes of Massachusetts residents do play and spend billions in the process. Statewide sales in fiscal year 2005 were $4.4 billion, up $100 million from the previous year, lottery records show. Massachusetts ranks fifth nationwide in lottery sales per capita, which translates to about $681worth of tickets, per person, per year, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
In the past five years, 663 people statewide won $400,000 or more playing the Massachusetts Lottery, records show. Ninety-seven of those winners live in communities north of Boston and most of them hit for $1 million. The top local prize winner was Everett matriarch Louise Outing, 95, who won $5.6 million in September 2004 playing her regular numbers -- 4-5-11-16-18-26 -- in the Megabucks game.
But Outing, who said she was unlikely to live long enough to collect the 20 annual payments of about $198,000 after taxes, sued the Lottery for the right to a lump sum payment. Outing outlived her husband and six children, and she wanted the money immediately to dole out to her seven grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren.
She lost.
Today, Outing is still negotiating with several private companies in hopes of collecting a lump sum payment, in exchange for a portion of her winnings, said Cynthia Smith, her great-granddaughter. A year-old state law allows such transactions for winners who don't want to wait 20 years to collect their full jackpot.
In the meantime, Outing has cashed two of the annual checks, paid college bills for one great-grandchild, bought another a car, and is remodeling the house she has lived in for 80 years.
''I was trying to get her to knock it down but she refused. We will renovate from the inside out," Smith said. ''She gave all the grandchildren five figures, and she still has the same washer and dryer."
The matriarch has had to fend off a number of strangers seeking handouts, including one woman who claimed to be a long-lost relative. She showed up at the door two or three times, Smith said.
Relentless requests for money come with the territory, lottery winners say.
But Richard Harrington, a $4 million 30th Anniversary Spectacular winner from Wakefield, gratefully gave thousands after hitting big three years ago. One of the first checks Harrington wrote was to a local pharmacist who had given his wife, Betty, about $13,000 worth of medications free of charge. The family, facing astronomical medical bills with no health insurance, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Betty Harrington, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, had a double-lung transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1991, the hospital's first such operation, and has required expensive antibiotics and antirejection drugs ever since.
''I am happy to be able to pay the bills and be able to have three squares a day," said Richard Harrington, 52. Winning the lottery ''has smoothed things out so we are back to eating things besides Saltines and water."
Harrington, who owns a construction company, continues to work and to squirrel away a third of their yearly lottery payment in ''conservative" investments. Their annual lottery check is about $140,000, after taxes.
''The financial planner said 20 years goes by really quick," Harrington said. ''When you are handed your last check, that's the end of the rainbow, and you certainly need something to fall back on."
Twenty years apparently ended too soon for the Bowser family, formerly of Wakefield. On Dec. 22, 1984, Rosemarie Bowser, then a 37-year-old housewife, hit the Megabucks jackpot for $13,045,160. It remains the third largest Megabucks jackpot in state history, lottery officials said.
In an interview with the Globe a day after winning, a jubilant Bowser said they would pay off their bills and buy the house they had been renting for four years in Wakefield.
Less than two years later, the family moved to Florida, but not before buying a
Rosemarie Bowser, who ran the books for the businesses, died in May 2004, he said. The last of her 20 annual lottery payments, a check for $456,580.60 after taxes, was paid last year.
Reached by phone at the family's car racing shop, her husband, Ralph Bowser, now 62, said he's tired of talking about the lottery.
''People think I'm loaded," he said. ''I'm broke. That's why I'm still working."
Then he hung up the phone.
Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com. 
