HELPING IN CANCER FIGHT
Lottery grand prize open, expansive
Calgary’s latest lottery home is one the builder said he’d be proud to live in with his own family.
Oliver Trutina of Truman Homes introduced the two-storey home in West Point Estates at the launch of the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s Cash and Cars Lottery last week. He called the home a “blend of timeless living with urban flair.”
“We wanted to have a truly functional home for any family and we wanted it to reflect a smart, yet comfortable lifestyle,” he said. “With over 3,500 square feet of living space, I, too, would be proud to win and call this house my home.”
This is the seventh year in a row that Truman Homes, along with great support from its suppliers and trades, has built the Cash and Cars Lottery grand prize home in Calgary.
Truman Homes has contributed to many community initiatives over the years, and over the past seven has contributed more than $26 million in donations to various charitable organizations and non-profits.
“We’re trying to keep it a bit more humble,” Trutina said of the home design in more recent years.
“The first couple of years, we went crazy, and nobody would ever keep the house when they won it. Now, the last three years, the winners have actually kept the house. It feels better.”
This year’s home is an open and expansive plan.
“For me, it’s a freeflowing house with very little interior partitioning walls. That facilitates being together,” Trutina said.
Worth more than $1.4 million, this grand prize includes the custom, a 2017 Toyota Camry Hybrid plus $5,000 cash.
The second grand prize package, worth more than $1.1 million, in- cludes a luxury home in Edmonton by Kimberley Homes, a 2017 Toyota Corolla IM, plus $5,000 cash. In total, there are 3,012 prizes worth more than $4.2 million up for grabs. When touring the lotto home, Trutina asked that visitors remember the purpose of this fundraiser.
“I may be tiny, but I must stand tall for my mother, brother and my younger sister,” Mee Wan Loh said at the launch of the lotto home. Her mother died at age 68 of leu- kemia, her father at 79 of prostate cancer, and her younger sister at 44 from an aggressive breast cancer. She had to travel back to Malaysia and Singapore to help support and nurse her parents and sister. As Singapore has no national health-care system, she also paid for her sister’s chemotherapy, radiation and medication.
An ardent fundraiser for the Alberta Cancer Foundation, she also puts the pedal to her love of cycling and participating in the Ride to Conquer Cancer. Dr. Nancy Nixon, an oncologist at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, says the centre sees about 700 patients a day.
It’s a centre that seeks to participate in as many clinical trials and studies as it can, to help create better and more effective treatments.
“With funds raised from fundraisers such as this, and the Ride to Conquer Cancer, we will be able to continue to enrol in these studies (and clinical trials),” Nixon said.