STRIKING it rich
LOTTO WINNERS REVEALED AS 31 MEMBERS OF BOILERMAKERS LOCAL 203 IN NEWFOUNDLAND
Thirty-one oil refinery workers, members of Boilermakers Local 203 in Newfoundland, share $60million Lotto Max jackpot
Thirty-one oil refinery workers — including twin brothers, a married couple, a father and son and three people who live on the same street in a tiny Newfoundland town — took on the mantle of millionaire Wednesday.
The winners and about 300 jubilant family members gathered at a St. John’s convention centre to receive $60 million from Atlantic Lottery Corp. after the group bought the winning Lotto Max ticket last week at a gas station in Holyrood.
All are members of the Boilermakers Local 203 trade union at the refinery in Come By Chance.
“I got the richest crew in the country,” Lee Hickey joked as he and the other winners assembled two rows deep on a stage, all wearing black T-shirts. They beamed as they described their shock upon finding out they had the matching numbers for the biggest jackpot in Atlantic Canada to date and one of the top five in Canada.
“I had a $60-million ticket in my hand and I was afraid to lay it down. I was afraid to walk away from it,” Sherry Moore Hickey, Lee’s wife and co-worker.
“I had to contact everyone because there’s 31 in our group ... They would say silly things like, ‘Are you drinking?’ I told them all the same story — we’re millionaires. This is not a joke. We are millionaires!”‘
Moore Hickey, who has been buying lottery tickets for her refinery co-workers since November, said a group member disrupted the quiet of their Avondale home with a phone call at about 4:30 a.m. Saturday and urged her husband to check their numbers.
The call was prompted by Eugene Lewis, 63, who woke up early Saturday and checked the results, seeing news that there was a winner in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Lewis woke up his wife and said, “I think we got that lotto.”
“I retired at 5:15 Saturday morning,” he said.
Four other winners, who range in age from 24 to 63, also retired almost immediately after getting word that they would get about $1.9 million each. For Moore Hickey, that’s multiplied by two since her husband also kicked in $5 for a group purchase of $155 worth of tickets.