Lockdown to remember: Auckland woman scoops $11.5 million Powerball win

A young woman from Auckland has millions of reasons to celebrate this lockdown after winning $11.5 million with Powerball First Division on Saturday night.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, was having an early start to the day on Sunday morning when she first discovered just how lucky the little yellow ticket she bought through the Lotto NZ App had become.

“I happened to wake up really early on Sunday morning and was catching up on things on my phone while I waited for the rest of the house to wake up. That’s when I saw I had an email from Lotto NZ saying that I had a prize to claim. All I could think was ‘surely not’ – I kind of just brushed it off and went back to what I was doing,” laughed the woman.

It wasn’t until after breakfast that the woman finally decided to check her ticket.

“I opened the Lotto NZ App and saw ‘congratulations’ pop up almost straight away. I glanced at the prize and actually read it as $11,500 – I was stoked with that,” said the woman.

“But after checking my ticket a few times, I looked at the prize amount more closely and started to second guess myself – $11,500,000 was staring back at me and it felt like an awful lot of zeros. I ended up typing the number into Google just to double check what I was seeing, before I got too excited,” laughed the woman.

After realising that she had just become Lotto NZ’s newest multi-millionaire, the woman wrote the prize amount down on a piece of paper and raced out of her room to share the news with her sister.

“She woke me up actually! I was having a bit of a sleep in when she woke me up with a piece of paper in my face, asking me to double check it for her. I was so bleary that I wasn’t sure what was going on – I could barely make sense of all the zeroes either,” laughed the winner’s sister.

After confirming that the woman wasn’t dreaming, the pair then went about their day as usual.

“We tried to keep things pretty normal – I couldn’t sit still though!” said the woman.

“Later in the day we headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few things and decided to give Lotto NZ a call while we were in the carpark, just to double check everything. When the woman on the phone confirmed that I had won $11.5 million… well, it was unbelievable. My sister and I just sat in the car screaming – it was such a cool moment,” the woman said.

So just how does a Powerball winner celebrate in Level 4 lockdown?

“Being in lockdown means there isn’t a lot we can do to celebrate, but I went straight into the supermarket and grabbed a few treats – we actually celebrated with ice creams in the car,” said the woman.

After a whirlwind twenty-four hours and with her prize now claimed, the woman is looking forward to enjoying her winnings.

“I’ve always dreamed of buying my first home and am so excited to finally be able to do that! I’m very family oriented, so I’m really excited to be able to help my family out and set them up for the future – it means so much to me. I feel so incredibly lucky – I’ll never forget this lockdown, that’s for sure!”

The $11.5 million winning Powerball ticket was sold on MyLotto and was made up of $11 million from Powerball First Division and $500,000 from Lotto First Division.

This is the fifteenth Powerball winner already this year and comes three weeks after an Ashburton player won $5.3 million with Powerball First Division.

Powerball wins in 2021

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