Sargento workers win $209 million Powerball
By Belia Ortega
Sheboygan Press staff
A group of 100 Sargento Foods factory workers, mostly from St. Cloud in Fond du Lac County, claim to have won the $208.6 million Powerball jackpot, the largest jackpot in Wisconsin Lottery history.
The mostly second-shift cheese factory employees each chipped in $1 to a pool for tickets that were purchased at the Ma and Pa's Grocery Express in Fond du Lac, said Eric Heimermann, who works in the shipping department of the Plymouth-based Sargento Foods.
Once the jackpot was more than $100 million, the factory workers began a lottery ticket pool, Heimermann, 24, of St. Cloud, said in a telephone interview Sunday night from Fat Boys Tavern in St. Cloud. Many of the employees gathered at the tavern with family and friends to celebrate.
"I think everybody pretty much decided we're going to pay our bills and we're going to take it from there," he said. "We're all going to work tomorrow. We still have a job to do."
Kory Feldmann, 25, of St. Cloud, a production worker who is a member of the group, said he was feeling absolutely wonderful.
"Holy cow! … Oh yeah. I got lotsa plans," Feldmann said. "I'm going to pay bills and continue working."
The winning numbers drawn Saturday night were 2, 3, 9, 48, 50 and the Powerball was 23.
A Wisconsin Lottery official could not confirm the jackpot winner as of Sunday evening.
On Sunday, regular customers curious about the jackpot streamed into where the winning ticket was sold, Ma and Pa's Grocery Express along the so-called "Miracle Mile" where the winning ticket was sold. South Main Street earned that name because several stores there sold multimillion-dollar tickets in the 1990s.
"Everybody enjoys coming here, they come from all over," said Pat Moses, who owns Ma and Pa's with her son, Phil. "They are vacationing, they come in. And they have to come to the Miracle Mile and see us."
Ma and Pa's — which itself will receive $100,000 — has quite a rich history of selling winning tickets. The store sold a winning Mega-bucks ticket worth $6.5 million in 1994 and has sold winning tickets for $500,000, $250,000 and $100,000 too. Phil Moses and a co-owner even split a jackpot worth $138,000 at one point.
"We sell a lot of tickets of course. But statistically we shouldn't be selling this many winners," Phil Moses said.
Elsewhere on the Mile, someone bought a ticket in 1993 that won them a Powerball jackpot worth $111.2 million, said Jessica Iverson, Wisconsin Lottery spokeswoman. Two other people have won jackpots worth more than $1 million since 1993, she said.
"There's not really anything else like that in Wisconsin," she said. "That area does have a reputation for being lucky."
The jackpot won Saturday is the largest in Wisconsin history, she said. Before this drawing, the largest jackpot in Wisconsin had been a Powerball jackpot worth $195 million, won by a couple from Illinois in May 1998.
Three other tickets sold in Wisconsin matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball on Saturday, the lottery said. Those tickets, worth $10,000 each, were sold in Appleton, Lake Geneva and Mellen. Powerball is played in 29 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Iverson said it can take several days or weeks for a winner to come forward. She encouraged the winner to sign the ticket, put it in a safe place and contact lottery officials.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.