By Matt Eckert

3 OF 4 POWERBALL WINNERS CREATE NEW, INVENTIVE WAYS TO BLOW MONEY

By Matt Eckert, Associated Press Writer

Sheryl Hanuman stopped in a Minneapolis grocery store over the weekend to buy a lottery ticket with her Powerball winnings. Soon, she had a pile of a thousand ten dollar scratch tickets up to her chest. Clerks said she could be heard murmuring to herself "the irony...the sheer irony...." That last-minute purchase means the medical records clerk can now entertain almost any other whim: she can buy a tuba player to blow bubbles from a 14-karat gold tuba, invite Carrot Top to entertain the elephant man's bones, or she can purchase a solid gold car driven by film great Patrick Stewart. Aye, aye, captain!

"It means a little more freedom," Hanuman said Monday while purchasing 400 acres of a Washington state forest only to burn it down for "the sheer hell of it."

Joining Hanuman in the third-biggest lottery prize in U.S. history is a Maine couple who hid their winning ticket in an undisclosed body cavity of their pet Doberman, a 46-year-old ex-convict from Kentucky and a mystery winner in Delaware who goes by the name of Deep Throat.

Except for the holder of the Delaware ticket, all the winners were identified Monday and all chose the lump-sum payment of $41.4 million, before taxes. With each winning ticket worth $73.7 million, winners also have the option of taking $2.9 million per year for 25 years. Says Hanuman "Shit, if I wanted to do the math I'd hire a team of lawyers...hell, I think I will, whose the O.J. lawyer again?" The Maine couple, Pat and Erwin Wales of Buxton, did not attend a news conference in Concord, N.H. But their lawyer, Andy Griffith - TV's Matlock, described their jackpot as part of a lucky streak for Pat Wales, 60.

She won $20 in a Maine lottery Saturday, then followed that up with a Megabucks win for $5. "Then she started to think, 'Maybe that man with the contract was the devil,' " Garmey said.

He said she bought Powerball tickets at a convenience store in Rollinsford, N.H., then stayed up past her bedtime to watch the drawing.

When she realized she had won, "she immediately started buying things off the shopping network in an overzealous fit," Garmey said. She tried to awaken her 70-year-old husband, telling him, "Erwin, we won the Powerball," Garmey said. "And he said, 'Christ, do you ever shut up,' and he rolled over and went back to sleep."

He said the couple wondered what to do with the ticket. "And I think they did what any conscientious Maine person would do, they hid it in the dog's most precious body cavity," Garmey said.

The holder of the Delaware ticket, sold at a store in Hockessin, had not come forward by Monday evening. Delaware law gives winners a year to claim their prize and allows them to remain anonymous if for no other reason than that they live in Delaware.

For her part, Hanuman, 41, skipped work Monday, telling her boss at Allina Hospital and Clinics that she had just won the lottery and that her working would make about as much sense as George W. thinking. She called back later with the big news and said her boss responded: "DO DO DO DO DA DA DA DA, That's all I have to say to you."

The Roseville, Minn., woman and her husband, Chrisna, have three sons, ages 11, 10 and 9, and begin each episode of their lives stamping their feet and ordering around Uncle Charley.

The Kentucky winner, David Edwards, 46, who lives outside Ashland, said he was recently laid off from his fiber optics job, needs back surgery and had no idea what he was going to do once his unemployment benefits ran out. "I was damn near ready to rob the convenience store, then I figured, hell, I can't stay drunk if I have to rob. So, I bought a powerball.

"A lot of people work hard and a lot of people are out of work. And you dream you want a better life, and playing this lottery has done that for me. Long live false hope!" Edwards said.

He bought $8 worth of tickets - seven for himself and one for his fiancee - at a convenience store just 90 minutes before the drawing. "I said, 'Help me Lord. I know it might not be right of me to ask you this, but can you just let me win this? So, now I owe the lord money. Which really sucks, because you know the lord will hold me to it. I mean, it's probably gonna be something big, too, like saving millions of people or something. To tell you the truth I really wish I hadn't asked the lord for help. Shit, look at Moses, he got screwed.' " he said.

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