JACKPOT WINNER HAS OLD CAPE TIES

As Missouri's newest multimillionaire, Jerry Sue Huellewig of St. Charles is probably hearing from lots of old friends and long-lost relatives this week.

But Huellewig, who claimed a $69 million Missouri Powerball jackpot Tuesday, wonders if anyone from her old hometown remembers her.

Huellewig -- then Jerry Sue Thompson -- grew up in Cape Girardeau and graduated from the teacher training school on the Southeast Missouri State College campus in 1948.

"That was my high school. So I got to go to the campus without going to college," she said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

She moved to St. Louis when she was 20, hoping to find work. "There weren't a lot of job opportunities in Cape then," she said.

Huellewig, 64, won't have to worry about finding a job again. The jackpot she claimed -- the largest in the state's history, and the fifth-largest nationally to be claimed by a single winner -- will provide her with an annual income of about $2.4 million for the next 20 years, after taxes.

That's not a bad raise for someone who was making less than $40,000 a year just last week.

"I'm just getting ready to retire," she said, just a year earlier than she had planned.

Huellewig worked in the "tool crib" for 29 years at McDonnell Douglas. She's lived in St. Charles for "about 40 years now," she said.

She said she has fond memories of Cape Girardeau. "It was a lot smaller then. It's still a pretty town. The college was a lot smaller then, too," she said.

Huellewig comes back to Cape Girardeau "once in a while. I had an aunt and uncle there, but they've passed away," she said. "I still have some property out on the Bend road."

All the publicity about her new-found fortune could reunite her with some old friends, she said.

"Maybe a lot of my old friends will remember me and get in touch," she said.

A reporter offered to publish her phone number, but Huellewig laughed and replied, "No, I don't think you need to do that."

She joked that now she can come back and show all her friends that she hit it big in the big city.

"Oh boy, can I, if it ever gets through to me," she said. "It has never dawned on me. I just can't comprehend that much money."

Huellewig said she's not sure yet how she'll spend her winnings, but she does plan to share it with her family, including her two grown daughters.

"I'll probably just buy a new house, some new furniture and some clothes and get used to that," she said. "When you've worked all your life, it's hard to understand this much money. But I'm still small-time or small-town, whatever you want to call it."

She is starting to get used to some of the perqs of the rich and famous. Her family and friends are carefully screening her calls.

"We're kind of policing the phone," Huellewig said.