Winning Lotto ticket region’s biggest windfall
Someone in Timaru could be better off by a whopping $7.25 million in what seems certain to be South Canterbury’s biggest Lotto windfall.
The identity of the lucky winner, and whether or not they live in South Canterbury, remained a mystery last night.
Saturday’s winning Powerball First Division Lotto ticket was sold at Countdown Church St in Timaru.
The total prize is made up of $7m from Powerball First Division and $250,000 from Lotto First Division, with the $1m First Division prize being split four ways.
Yesterday, staff at the supermarket said they were ‘‘stoked and very happy for the winner’’.
They confirmed that the holder of the winning ticket had not yet claimed the prize.
The win came almost two years after what was reported at the time as being Timaru’s biggest Lotto prize, a $7m Powerball collect in January 2016. That win was made up of $1m from First Division and $6m from the Powerball prize.
Whoever the winner of Saturday night’s prize is, life seems certain to be vastly different for them and their family now, and they may feel a connection with the words of last year’s big winners, a family syndicate, who chose to remain anonymous.
As they prepared to claim their prize at the Lotto headquarters in Auckland, they told Stuff they still could not believe their luck - even after checking their ticket, purchased at Timaru’s Pak ‘n’ Save, ‘‘about a hundred times’’.
A family syndicate spokesperson said at the time they had been playing Lotto since it started in New Zealand. ‘‘And we’ll still keep playing after this.’’
‘‘I’ve been playing Lotto for years, but never thought I’d win. But when I started checking the ticket, I saw we had the first four numbers, and then I saw the Powerball number. So I shut the computer off.
‘‘I didn’t want to finish checking the ticket, I was way too nervous.’’
If Timaru’s latest big winners are aware of the glad tidings yet, chances are they’ve gone through some of the same emotions.