Published: September 11, 2007 10:57 am      

Ohio family bought winning $314 million Powerball prize in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS — It was the best-timed stoplight David Coterel ever encountered.

The retired auto worker from Ohio had crossed into neighboring Indiana on U.S. 40 and was debating whether to stop at a Speedway convenience store to buy a Powerball ticket. After all, he figured, another Speedway store just 3 miles down the road supplied the winning ticket nine years ago.

"I kept thinking, what are the odds of a Speedway hitting again" Coterel said Monday. "Just at the last moment, the light changed. I wasn't even in the lane to turn in there. I just whipped in there and stood in line for a little bit and got the ticket."

His ticket, selected by computer on the afternoon of the Aug. 25 drawing, was worth $314.3 million, the fourth-largest prize in the lottery game's 22-year history.

He'll share the winnings with his two adult children. The family waited two weeks to come forward to make sure the lottery paperwork — and the cash — were in order and ready to be claimed.

"I know the world is going to turn upside down," the 65-year-old Coterel said at a news conference in front of the Hoosier Lottery headquarters.

"Right now, I'm going to lock all the doors and not even answer the phone."

Coterel, who lives in Riverside, Ohio, is retired from General Motors. He will share the winnings with his son, David Coterel Jr., 42, and daughter, Lynn Hiles, 46, both of Dayton. Neither sibling has any children, and the elder Coterel's wife, Dorothy, died of cancer three years ago.

The family decided to take the cash option on the prize, meaning they will collect $145,985,100 before taxes, said Hoosier Lottery executive director Kathryn Densborn.

Coterel said he found out his ticket had the winning numbers — 2, 8, 23, 29, 35 and Powerball 19 — when he watched the news on television the night after the drawing.

"I lost it," he said of his reaction. "I'm an emotional person, but I really lost it."

The first person he called was his daughter, who quit her job as a nightshift postal worker in Dayton two days later.

"She thought somebody was sick or died when I called her. ... I couldn't believe it," Coterel said.

Coterel Jr., who took a buyout from his job as a machine repairman at a Delphi auto parts plant but continued as a temporary worker, quit his job a day after his sister left hers.

’The hardest part was a lack of sleep,’ the younger Coterel said. ’You lay down and your mind races: What am I going to do? What am I going to do? There’s a lot of questions.’

Hiles said it was difficult to keep the secret of their winning ticket, especially to her co-workers.

’You have to bite your tongue and not say anything, because you don’t want any undue attention until you have to,’ she said.

She and her brother said they would get new automobiles and travel. Their father said he had no immediate plan for the money.

’But I’m sure something will come up,’ he said.

Richmond is just west of the Indiana-Ohio state line, about 60 miles east of Indianapolis.

The store where the winning ticket was sold is about 3 miles on U.S. 40 from another Speedway store that sold the winning ticket for a $295.7 million Powerball jackpot to a group of 13 co-workers from a factory in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in July 1998.

The 1998 jackpot was the largest of its kind to that point.

Powerball is played in 29 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The record jackpot was $365 million won by eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant in February 2006.