Staff and Wire Reports | Posted: Tuesday, April 4, 2006 7:00 pm
Three of the eight winners who shared Powerball’s biggest jackpot walked into the People’s City Mission Tuesday to give money to those who needed it most.
Alain Maboussou, 26, Quang Dao, 56, and Dung Tran, 34, all became multimillionaires in February when they and their co-workers at a meat-processing plant matched the Powerball numbers to win a $365 million jackpot.
The three winners made a surprise visit to the mission Tuesday evening and announced that they’d donate $6,000 directly to the people. Once disbursed to everyone at the mission, it equaled about $40 per person.
“It was a blessing, to know a group of their status would take the time and share their blessing with the less fortunate,” said Thomas Thomas, 42, who’s lived at the mission with his wife and four kids since their car broke down two months ago.
“They prayed with us, and then when they left, we prayed for them. A lot of times when people come into a lot of money, sometimes it’s a blessing and sometimes it’s a curse. We prayed they would be blessed.”
Thomas and other people at the mission said Maboussou did most of the talking, tearing up at times.
They said he described how the lottery winners had always talked about seeing people from the mission buy lottery tickets and had promised to help them out one day if they ever won.
The U-Stop where they bought the winning ticket is two blocks south of the mission.
Thomas and his wife planned to find a ride to Walmart and buy supplies for their kids.
Said Sherrie Allen, another resident of the mission: “When you’re down and out and you’re just waiting to get work and waiting for your next paycheck, something like that happens,” Dao and Tran are both refugees from Vietnam. Tran has been in the United States for 16 years and has worked at the plant for 15 of them.
Dao has been in the United States since 1988.
Maboussou came to the United States from the Republic of Congo in 1999 to flee the civil war there.
“It was really a surprise and I want to thank these individuals because they’ve blessed some folks,” said Pastor Tom Barber, who runs the mission.
Barber said the mission did not ask the lotto winners for donations. He also said one of the men who made the donation had actually stayed a few nights at the mission before winning the jackpot.