Lotto win was no mistake

A Palmerston North woman has described the rollercoaster ride of hope, disappointment, doubt and excitement as she realised she had won a $1 million Lotto firstdivision prize.

The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, had been out for dinner on the night of the March 21 draw when she saw a Lotto car parked outside the restaurant.

‘‘I joked to my friend, ‘oh look, they must have our numbers and they’ve come to give us our money’,’’ she said. ‘‘So the first thing I did when I got home was check my Lotto ticket.’’

She assumed she had done something wrong, turned off the computer, turned it back on and checked again.

She knew the numbers online were not her regular numbers, then remembered she also had a bonus ticked in the draw, and it came good.

Not believing her eyes, she assumed she had done something wrong, turned off the computer, turned it back on and checked again. ‘‘But when I turned it back on, all the same winning numbers were there.’’

The first person the winner phoned was the friend she’d been out to dinner with. ‘‘She picked up the phone and said, ‘I don’t know why you’re ringing me up, we didn’t win Lotto’.

‘‘And I was able to say, ‘well, I did’.’’

Her friend came around to double-check. ‘‘It wasn’t until we went to the news online and saw that the winning ticket had been sold at Pioneer New World, which is where I got my ticket, that I started to get excited.’’

The woman said family was the most important thing to her, so she was going to spend some of her fortune on a family celebration – ‘‘that’s when it will feel real’’.