Neville woman pulls in $60M
Mary Wernicke now province’s largest winner
Fred Wernicke was out in the field — it’s combining season after all in rural Saskatchewan — when his daughter brought him the phone and told him to call grandma right away.
“Grandma” — Fred’s mother Mary Wernicke — told him that the possibility she’d raised one night earlier — a lotto win — “had come true.” The Neville woman had just become Saskatchewan’s largest lottery winner, with a $60-million jackpot. He was excited for her, but then Fred went back to hauling grain from his fields. “Because the combine was full,” he explained with a chuckle at a Thursday’s Regina news conference. Besides, that’s what hardworking farm families do, even when they suddenly strike it rich. For now, the plan is to “keep farming,” said Mary. “Keep farming, pray for wisdom, pray for peace,” her daughter Julie Welk quickly added.
“Wisdom’s worth way more than any money out there,” said Fred.
Welk said her mother has worked hard all her life — as a farmer’s wife, a welder, an upholsterer, a sewer of “anything without a pattern,” organizer for six children, and their driver, loading them each week in a half-ton truck to get to Sunday school.
“She got us where we needed to be with many things,” added Welk.
Mary was still making her own buns this week from scratch, even after winning all that dough.
To Welk, such a windfall is welldeserved for her diligent, enterprising mother. “It’s amazing. It couldn’t have happened to a better person,” she added.
Looking more than a bit overwhelmed in front of the news cameras after her first limo ride, Mary wiped at tears of joy as she shared her story. “I’m doing OK,” said Mary. Her plans for all that money? “I’ll just sleep on it for the time being,” she sensibly added.
She was born in the Swift Current area and never left. (She declined to reveal her age, except to joke, “I’m too old to die young.”) As to whether or not she’ll move now, Mary said, “I’m not sure yet.”
She buys lottery tickets each week, but this time grabbed a Lotto Max quick pick ticket — the numbers chosen at random for her — from the Pharmasave in Swift Current. Those numbers —5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 27, and 28 — made Mary one big winner in small-town Saskatchewan, one of some 80 residents in a village about 50 kilometres south of Swift Current.
Five days after the draw, Mary woke up feeling like she ought to check her ticket. There’s an old saw that if you have itchy palms, you’re going to come into some money.
“I had very itchy hands. I had to get it checked out — but I didn’t have a clue,” said Mary.
She returned to the same store to check out the ticket. The clerk looked at it, then looked to Mary and exclaimed: “You’re the big winner.” Mary could scarcely believe it.
“I’m just glad that day was over.” Trying to wrap her head around suddenly having $60 million in reach “really, it hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Pharmasave owner Jahnaya Mann was busy with the pharmacy that day, but she soon heard the news. “My staff was ecstatic,” she said. “Of course, they’ve been biting their tongues for a week.”
It’s the second big lottery winner at the store, the other one a few years ago for a cool $1 million.
Despite her win, Mary said she’ll probably keep buying lottery tickets.
Except, now she can afford more of them.
Darren Wilcox, volunteer vicechair with the Saskatchewan Lottery Corp., said the closest any Saskatchewan lottery winner has come to Mary’s windfall is $40 million, picked up by a Paradise Hill couple in August 2011. The next closest is a $30-million jackpot won in Big River in March 2013.