SEPTA lottery winners say they will stay on job despite $107 million jackpot

For the first time since hitting a $107.5 million Powerball jackpot, 48 SEPTA employees spoke publicly today about what it’s like to win real big. 

“Oh my god, we won, we won, we won, look look look here it is highlighted in yellow,” recounted Pamela Schurgot, who helped organize the lottery pool at SEPTA.  She was the first to discover the group of transit workers got all the lucky numbers last week.  The four dozen who share the prize range from relatively new employees to those with more than four decades on the job. Bob Landgraf spoke for the group, saying it was a surreal experience.  He received a text from his wife saying the winning ticket was sold at a newsstand at the Gallery mall, so he asked a co-worker where the group’s tickets were bought. “He said, ‘Newsstand at the Gallery’. I turned and showed him my wife’s text, he didn’t say a word, left his lunch behind to go find copies of the tickets,” said Langraf.  “About 20 minutes later there were shouts, there was laughter outside one of the offices on the floor, I walked down I saw grins, wide eyes, some filled with tears like I never saw before.” Matt Sheridan is the youngest in the group at 26. “For a young person like me this is great, I can start my life, it’s been a tough economy the past few years, graduating college, it’s going to be nice,” he said. Marylouise Wagner is a stage three breast cancer survivor who found out she was a winner two weeks after heart surgery. “I recovered and returned to work after a long unpaid absence, that’s the survivorship piece, the surprise was a scant 15 days later I won the lottery with my SEPTA co-workers,” said Wagner. Each winner will get $2.2 million before taxes and they all say they’ll keep working at SEPTA.

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