For lottery winners, no big life changes

The two biggest of eight winners awarded more than $12 million by the New York Lottery Thursday said the money wouldn't change their lives that much -- other than making them easier.

Susan Machtinger, 62, a retired office equipment account executive from East Meadow, won $4 million with her lotto ticket purchased May 31, she said at a news conference at Roosevelt Field mall.

She will now be able to move her mother, who was widowed three years ago, in an assisted living home, she said. She added that she has been taking care of her parents for more than a decade.

A family cruise or vacation also might be in the works. Other than that, she just wants to use the lump sum of just over $1.5 million after taxes to help pay for the expenses of her two children and two grandchildren.

"That's her money. I mean, I will go on a free vacation if she offers," said her boyfriend, Wayne Parker. "But it's just enough to know that she doesn't have to worry anymore."

Machtinger was so convinced that she had no chance to win that she didn't even look up the winning numbers until several days after the drawing.

When all her numbers came up, she told her mother that "there's something wrong." Her mother, she said, told her that nothing was wrong with her ticket and that she had won.

Gregory Scheuerman, 34, a math teacher from Dix Hills, doesn't have a family to support yet. And even though he will receive a check for just under $100,000 annually for the next 20 years from his $3 million scratch-off ticket, he said he would continue to teach.

"It's amazing," Scheuerman said. "I've been blessed with a job I love, and with this lottery win. It's a blessing. It's great."

When he realized that he'd won, Scheuerman was so excited that he hugged and kissed the man who sold him the ticket June 25 at the Huntington Card & Smoke Shop.

"It was crazy," Scheuerman recalled, laughing. "He told me to calm down."

Rather than quit his job, Scheuerman will use the winnings to supplement his salary. Traveling out to the West Coast, possibly to the Area 51 vicinity and Las Vegas, is likely on tap for him. Other than that, he doesn't think the lottery win will change his life too much.

"It's gonna be a lot better summers, I'll tell you," Scheuerman said. "Maybe less summer school, more vacation."