Golden rush for Thames couple

It’s been the talk of Thames for the last two days, but the mystery of the missing millionaire has now been solved as a local Thames couple have come forward with the golden ticket.

Saturday’s prize of $27.3 million is the fourth largest prize ever won in New Zealand with Powerball – and the size of the prize is not lost on its new owners.

‘‘It still doesn’t seem real,’’ the winner said in a statement, ‘‘I keep crying every time I think about it.’’

The lucky couple, who wish to remain anonymous, play Lotto every week and like to dream about what they might do if they won.

‘‘Just about every week I say to the man in the store, ‘if you’re not in it, you can’t win it’,’’ the winner said.

‘‘Although, I couldn’t have been more surprised when we did actually win it!’’

Not surprisingly, as this was the largest lottery prize ever won in Thames, the couple – like many others in Thames – were getting texts from friends and family on Saturday night saying ‘‘someone in Thames has won it’’.

Even with those texts, the couple didn’t get around to checking their ticket until later on Sunday.

‘‘We were having a cup of tea and just started talking about it and wondering who had won. Then we figured we should check our ticket .

‘‘So we pulled up the Lotto results on the computer and instantly the winning numbers just leapt out at me. I didn’t even need to circle any of them, they all just lined up on the top row. I couldn’t breathe! I kept trying to speak, but nothing would come out,’’ the winner said.

‘‘Eventually I turned to my husband, in a flood of tears, and said, ‘darling, I think we’ve won it’.’’ But with such a large prize at stake, the winning couple were having trouble believing it was real, so phoned their son and got him to come around to double-check the ticket for them.

‘‘We scanned the ticket on the Lotto NZ App and it came up ‘major prize’, and my son said, ‘well, you’ve definitely won something’. All of a sudden it started to seem more real.’’

The couple decided to head down to their local Lotto store to check the ticket officially once and for all, but got cold feet when they drove past and thought they saw a journalist taking photos of the store that sold the winning ticket.

‘‘We saw the photographer and just turned around and went home again,’’ the winner said, laughing.

‘‘We then decided to phone the store and let them know we were the winners.’’

The staff at Martina Four Square and Lotto couldn’t have been more accommodating to the lucky couple.

‘‘This the biggest prize we’ve ever sold,’’ store manager, Sukhtal Singh said. ‘‘The store was so busy on Sunday with everyone coming in to check their tickets, so we were very pleased to hear from the winners.’’

The manager closed the store and arranged for the winners to slip in the back entrance without drawing attention from any passers-by. It was a nervewracking moment for the couple as they handed over their ticket to the manager.

‘‘The Lotto manager said to us, ‘the machine will make it real’ and he took the ticket to check. The next thing he said to us was, ‘Congratulations – you’ve won it.’ ’’

The Thames couple still can’t believe their incredible windfall.

‘‘We were lying in bed last night and I said to my husband, ‘I’m cuddling a millionaire.’ We both just cracked up laughing,’’ the winner said.