31 oil refinery workers strike gold with $60M lottery win

A group of 31 oil refinery workers struck gold in Canada this week. They pooled their money to buy lottery tickets — and won the $60 million jackpot. 

The workers won the largest prize awarded in Atlantic Canada, BBC News reports. Each winner will take home around $1.9 million.

The workers, who come from the town of Come By Chance in Newfoundland, said they plan to retire, pay off mortgages and invest in education funding for their children and grandchildren.

“I made 28 other phone calls to tell the group members individually that we had the winning ticket,” Sherry Moore Hickey said in a statement via Atlantic Lottery Corporation Inc. “They had some choice words for me as they thought I was joking.”

Some workers retired immediately, but others said they’d go back to work to finish a project at the refinery.

“We need to see it through, it’s the right thing to do for the other Boilermakers in our union,” Moore Hickey said in the statement. “We want to ensure when we leave, we leave our membership in good standing.”