Santa Ana Woman Caps Winning Streak With Share of $47-Million Lotto Jackpot : Lady Luck

By MARTIN MILLER

Jan. 9, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — If this keeps up, they may start calling it the Edie Rodenbaugh touch.

In November, she beat the odds at a Laughlin casino and won $6,000 playing video poker. In December, the 48-year-old Santa Ana resident tapped radio station KRTH for $2,000 in a holiday telephone call-in contest.

But Saturday night, Edie Rodenbaugh cashed in on the mother of all lucky breaks, claiming one-third of a $47-million Super Lotto jackpot for herself, her husband and her two married children.

For the Rodenbaughs, that breaks down to pretax payments of $783,000 annually for the next 20 years.

“Everything had been happening for me lately,” said Rodenbaugh, flanked by her family at a news conference at the California Lottery office in Santa Ana. “Steve [her husband] and I talked about winning the lottery that morning.”

The other two winning Super Lotto jackpot tickets were purchased in Hawthorne and San Leandro.

Too excited to sleep since the weekend, the Rodenbaughs--Edie, Steve, adult sons Charlie and Ron, and daughter-in-law Debbie--appeared Monday to be more shellshocked than excited by their good fortune. Another daughter-in-law, Erin, wasn’t there.

Despite the emotional reaction, “it hasn’t really hit yet,” said Edie, who for years dispatched her husband to the Sav-On store near their Santa Ana home to purchase $5 in Lotto Quick Picks. “And I don’t think it will until I get the real check.”

The reality sunk in enough, however, for Edie to “run around the family room” in glee Saturday night and then quit her job as legal secretary on Monday morning. Otherwise, the Rodenbaugh family, who will split the money evenly among each of the three family couples, seemed reasonably unfazed by the windfall.

A soft-spoken Steve Rodenbaugh, 48, explained his decision to stay on in his job as a construction inspector for the City of Orange this way: “I enjoy my work. I’ve been there for 27 years. So why leave now?” (That dedicated attitude even after his full recovery from a stroke in September.)

And like father, like sons.

Neither Charlie, 27, of Orange nor younger brother Ron, 25, who lives near Lake Elsinore, plan to quit their jobs any time soon either. But Charlie, who works on classic cars, and Ron, a plumber, may go into in as yet undetermined business with their father.

The huge amount of cash isn’t prompting anyone to change their address either. The three Rodenbaugh couples are keeping their current homes but admit they soon will be upgrading with new carpets or kitchens.

“No maids. No mansions. Maybe, maybe a condo down in Laughlin,” said Edie, who until now had won only $80 by faithfully playing Lotto twice a week for the last 10 years. “It won’t change me as a person.”

About the only celebratory plans the Rodenbaughs foresee is a family trip to Hawaii.

“With no grandkids,” quickly added Debbie Rodenbaugh, 24, who is married to Ron.

Ron Rodenbaugh was really the only family member who had an inkling this weekend that his mother’s winning streak hadn’t run out just yet. In fact, he bragged to friends Saturday that if anybody was going to win the Lotto jackpot, it would be his mom.

“I knew it would be my mom because she’s the luckiest person I know,” said Ron, who almost fell off a ladder when he heard the news.

But Edie Rodenbaugh isn’t about to stop playing Lotto, which she has been since “day one.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.