Life At The End of the Rainbow

By Bonnie Angelo

In the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora, entrepreneur Keith Porchia cheerfully dons a hard hat to check on the progress of the 51-unit apartment complex he is developing. In Winter Springs, Fla., Sheelah Ryan, a retired real estate agent, meets with the board of the Ryan Foundation to map programs for what she calls "the new poor." Somewhere in southern Atlantic waters, Anthony Palermo, formerly of the U.S. Navy, cruises with his family aboard his own yacht, joyfully named Picked Six.

When state-run lotteries first became popular in the late 1970s, "instant millionaires" were the isolated stuff of media sensation. Now Porchia, Ryan and Palermo are part of something else entirely: an expanding niche of American society filled with overnight plutocrats. As lottomania has swept the nation, one result is an entirely new social stratum of millionaires, over 3,000 in all, and more are added each month. With some prizes soaring past nine digits (the largest: $118 million in California last April), a few recipients even approach being superrich. But America's pot-of-gold winners are to a surprising degree the opposite of the Me-first cohort of nouveau speculators who bedecked the greedy '80s.

According to the most comprehensive survey, winners are heavily clustered in higher-income brackets. Once they win, they shun spending sprees, pay off debts and, by a big percentage, continue to work or get additional education after their sudden windfall. Only 23% quit their job. Sharon Turner, a U.S. government worker, now has a $7.5 million nest egg but says her husband Darnell stays at his job at a Washington junior high school "because he wants to teach." Last week Don Wittman, 29, of Denver, amazed everybody twice: he won his second $2 million prize -- against odds figured at 17 trillion to 1 -- and decided to stay at his job as a carpenter. "Sure, I'm going to keep on working," he says. "Otherwise I'd just be bored."

The odds of joining the flourishing ranks of lotto millionaires are still longer than the risk of being struck by lightning. About 90 million players will ring up $20.6 billion in ticket sales this year. So far, 34 states have joined the lottery gold rush, raking in vital revenues for depleted coffers. Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook, professors of public policy and economics at Duke University, challenge the games of chance as regressive, inefficient means of raising revenue and suggest they prey upon minorities and the poor. The professors also wonder whether the lotteries' get-rich-quick appeal undermines the American work ethic. Arnie Wexler, director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling in New Jersey, another opponent, says almost half the calls for help that come to his organization are from lottery players.

Nonetheless, more and more rainbows continue to end on American doorsteps. Double-digit millions falling into your lap can have a wonderfully life- altering effect, but not necessarily the self-indulgent changes that lottery promotions lead customers to fantasize. Sheelah Ryan, for example: her $55.5 million Florida jackpot in 1988 is the biggest single win yet. She immediately set up a foundation, named in honor of her parents, "to help the new poor: single mothers and senior citizens who must live on Social Security and cannot. They need help." In addition, she gives small scholarships to young people because "they are our future, and it's a fun way of doing it."

And, yes, instant fortune changed the life-style of this unassuming former businesswoman. "What do I like about it most?" she muses. "Valet parking!" Ryan had her initial indulgences: she bought the Mercury Grand Marquis she had coveted and a handsome house to replace her mobile home. Otherwise she lives modestly, but with payments of nearly $2.8 million rolling in each year, she knows "I never, never have to worry for the rest of my life."

The luck of the draw can mean freedom to take a different kind of risk. "I'd been trying to build a hotel," says businessman Porchia, who owned several minimarkets. "But the banks weren't interested in financing it." Then he hit California's $10.7 million jackpot in 1987. "Suddenly, financing was available," he says wryly. At 55, he enrolled in Azusa Pacific University to earn a master's degree in business administration "to maximize my investments." His 75-room Comfort Suites Hotel opened three years ago and is being followed by his large apartment development. "Every goal you ever desired is satisfied in one day, so you have to set new goals," Porchia says. "It took me about three years to get used to the idea that if you want something, you just go and do it."

Cautionary tales abound of lottery winners whose bad investments lead them to bankruptcy, but most of America's luckiest people seem to keep their feet on the ground. The fact that they are paid in 20 annual taxable installments helps. (Annual payments also mean a much lower outlay by the lotteries.) Most winners stay in the same neighborhood, keep old friends and continue to look at price tags.

Sharon Barnes, 46, a loan officer who won $16 million in Worthington, Ohio, in 1988, is typical: she took sewing lessons after she struck it rich. "I'm still me," she says. "I was raised that way." She and her husband Eli, a retired Army master sergeant, also set up a $15,000 endowment for black studies at Ohio State University and gave $5,000 to an inner-city health conference. At the University of Akron, Mike Woodford, 31, stayed on as assistant football coach after winning $15 million in 1989. He was going through a divorce at the time and gave half the money to his ex-wife. In Virginia a relatively modest $1.4 million win enabled Old Dominion University student Jeff Berry, 20, to switch from a business major to the career he really wanted: teaching.

America's first big winner, Lou Eisenberg of Brooklyn, whose $5 million ticket made him an overnight celebrity in 1981, hardly ranks in the major leagues anymore. Before his ship came in, he says, "my job was changing light bulbs in an office building, making $225 a week. I had anxiety attacks; I was not functioning. I won the lotto, and the anxiety disappeared." An ebullient Eisenberg still lives in Brooklyn, but with an ocean view. The biggest flyer he takes these days is modest but steady betting at local racetracks.

Often it seems that friends and family have a harder time dealing with the sudden flood of cash than the winners. When Mike Wittkowski of Chicago won $42 million in 1984, he expected, at 26, to keep working as a printing-press foreman. Instead he was hassled by co-workers for holding a job he didn't need. Dismayed, he bought a liquor store and is now his own boss.

To be sure, the old saga of unexpected wealth, envy and rancor has not been abolished. In Philadelphia last summer, bitter feuding erupted between Danny Hagan, 28, and Margie Moore, 27, co-workers at an engineering company, over Hagan's slice of the $17 million winning ticket he bought for Moore. The battle ended last month in a sealed settlement and a shredded lifetime friendship.

For Boston cafeteria cook William Curry, 37, winning the Massachusetts lottery last year turned out to be his unluckiest bet. Three weeks after winning, he dropped dead of a heart attack, brought on by ceaseless hounding once his $3.6 million win was made public. Curry's is an extreme case, but the business offers, investment schemes and heartrending pleas for help that rain down on winners are a source of widespread worry. A number of states offer basic guidance courses in surviving good luck. They usually counsel winners to get a good tax accountant, an unlisted telephone number and a veneer of skepticism. Virginia's lottery gives each winner an advice video. In it, David Snyder of Lynchburg, a $10.9 million winner in 1990 and a dedicated community worker, offers the sage counsel he received from his pastor: Don't have a guilty conscience about rejecting pleas. You cannot cure all the world's poverty. But you can help some of the poor. Snyder has made Meals on Wheels a favorite charity.

Even for those who win big, there's always the chance that lightning might just strike twice, as it did five times even before Don Wittman's incredible luck. And then there is George Magalio, 49, owner of an office-supply company in Flemington, N.J. Using his own system to pick winning numbers, he has struck gold in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania for a total of $4 million. He has invested his winnings conservatively. And he's still playing.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Steve Hart

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