Ford: One Less Mouth to Feed as Worker Wins the Lottery
April 04, 2008

Ford Motor Co. has been offering all kinds of incentives to shed workers from its ranks, but this week it has one less, thanks to a payout bigger than anything Ford could deliver when one of its employees won the lottery.

David Sneath, a Ford hi-lo operator from Livonia, Mich., won Michigan’s $136 million Mega Millions jackpot — Michigan’s third-largest ever — on Tuesday, which was both April Fool’s Day and his 60th birthday.

What did Sneath do first? He quit his job at Ford, where he’d worked for 34 years.

"It's hard to relate to this," Sneath said as claimed his prize, surrounded by television cameras. "You're used to making $60,000, $70,000 a year, and all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about that kind of money. That's chump change."

The still-shocked Sneath, who took the lump-sum post-tax amount of $60 million instead of payouts over 20 years, said his first act would be to give $1 million cash to each of his four lottery pool friends from work. He and his buddies typically spend about $6 a week on tickets, but Sneath had gone this one alone, buying his ticket at a Detroit-area Mobil gas station.

Sneath learned about his winning numbers while he was working at a Ford auto-parts warehouse. After reading the numbers on his ticket, he yelled out he had won. “I went to my locker, I yelled to my boss, 'Hey, I'm done! I'm outta here!' " he said.

After paying his friends, Sneath said he plans to buy a fishing boat or two and a lake cottage in northern Michigan.

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