school in the long run and i think with this, we ll be able to keep the school going for awhile. for all of our winners. reporter: and then there are the albany seven. seven new york state government worker whose split a $319 million jackpot in 2011 in the mega millions lottery. this man and his wife decided to give back to their community, too. they donated $200,000 to construct a spray park in new york and did it in honor of their parents. another very generous canadian is tom crist, he won $40 million in 2013 and his first donation was $1.2 million to the tom baker cancer center in calgary. his wife janice had died of cancer a year before. he vowed all his winnings would ultimately go to charity. i know where the money is going. i m not keeping a dime. she would be 100% behind it. that s who she was. she was a very giving person.
seven new york state workers have stepped into the spotlight to claim their ginormous lottery jackpot. lucky seven. can you believe it? as these winners celebrated their $319 million prize, their coworkers decided who not to the coworker who decided not to kick in the couple bucks headed back to work. such a bummer. t.j. winick tells us all the details this morning. good morning, t.j. reporter: good morning, peggy and rob. it is hard to believe but a snickers bar might have been the difference between nothing and a historic jackpot. if a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is worth millions. $319 million, to be exact. i checked the ticket and i rechecked it and i rechecked it and rechecked it and couldn t believe it was real. reporter: gabrielle is one of the albany seven, maybe the luckiest group of coworkers ever. even the story of how they bought the winning ticket at this newsstand involved plenty of luck. or is it fate?
over the past couple days. let s get to the unlucky souls who didn t go in on the pot. are they going to get any of the goods? at first everybody thought there was this eighth person who opted out but it turns out it was about five people at least. so what happens is, these the seven who won are now being called the albany seven. they have this office pool going. it s been going on for years. they ve played the big jackpots and wait till the jackpot is at least 100 million dollars. usually when that happens, they gettern everybody to chip in. usually it s about 1 people. that s what s been the case lately. so with this winning, five people actually opted out. they didn t want to join in. you re talking about five people who are not sharing in the winnings. it really does make you wonder, you know, will they share it? i asked the question actually, brooke. they said they re not sure.
reporter: it s been a while since i ve seen such a happy bunch of people. they are being called the albany seven. they work for the state of new york. they put their money into an office pool and have the winning ticket. let me tell you a couple of stories how this came about. the 63-year-old who is in the group said he went to a convenience store he goes to all the time to buy these lotto tickets. he was in line to buy his lotto ticket and somebody cut in front of him as he was reaching down to get a snickers bar he says was his weakness, but he let the guy get in front of him. mike stepped up and bought that winning ticket. it was 29-year-old gabrielle who saw the drawing on tv. john is the person pointed out to go and retrieve the ticket that was still in the office at their offices for the state of new york. he was so nervous he took his
millions jackpot drawn on march 25th. i don t want to dli the suspense any longer, but we at the lottery have been calling them the albany seven. you can call them john hilton of north greenbush. raise your hand. gabrielle mahar of colony. from green island, john cutie. from colony, tracy susman. mike barth of bethlehem. from clifton park, kristen baldwin. and from johnstown, leon peck. let s hear a big round of applause for all of our winners!