An Auckland family man was brought to tears last weekend after learning he had won $1 million with Lotto First Division at his local dairy.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, bought his lucky ticket from Pak N Save Mt Albert for last Wednesdayās Lotto draw then put the ticket in his wallet for safe keeping.
āIt was such a crazy week last week ā I actually couldnāt find my wallet for three days. When you lose things like that you normally expect to find them pretty quickly. But by Saturday afternoon, I was starting to think about cancelling my cards. The Lotto ticket didnāt even cross my mind,ā said the winner.
Luckily for him the missing wallet was found underneath his bed and his Lotto ticket was duly checked on the Lotto NZ App.
āI scanned my ticket and it came up with the message āMajor Prize Winnerā. I thought I might have won $5,000 so I took a screenshot and sent it to my Mum. She messaged back saying I better go down to the dairy to check.ā
Without much thought, the winner took his kids for a walk down to local dairy and handed over his ticket.
āI was expecting to hear the winning music play, but when the man behind the counter said to me āYou have won $1 millionā, I just burst into tears. It never even crossed my mind that I was going win that much.
āIf I had known I was going to win $1 million, I might not have brought the kids with me,ā laughed the winner.
āBut thankfully they knew that Dad was crying for a good reason.ā
The man then jumped on the phone and called his Mum and the whole family turned up at the shop to celebrate.
āWe went back to my house afterwards and we decided to splash out and order some takeaways from the fancy Italian restaurant up the road. It was such a special moment sharing it with everyone.ā
The man now plans to use this money to help out family, pay off debt and is thinking about going on an overseas trip for the first time.
