A lucky Palmerston North woman got the surprise of her life when she discovered the little yellow ticket hidden in her
wallet was worth $250,000 – and she had been carrying it around for the past six months.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased her ticket while on a trip to Taupō back in September last year. At
the time, she popped it in the back of her wallet and then forgot all about it until this week.
“I haven’t been using cash because of COVID, so I totally forgot I had a couple of Lotto tickets tucked in that part of
my wallet – I just never look there anymore,” said the woman.
It wasn’t until recently, when the winner had some change to put away, that she noticed a few Lotto tickets sitting in
her wallet waiting to be checked. So the next time she passed her local Lotto store she decided to do just that.
“I was a sweaty mess from doing the gardening and almost didn’t check my tickets because I just wanted to get in and out
as fast as I could,” laughed the woman.
“But as I was leaving the store, I saw someone at the Lotto counter and thought ‘Ah I may as well just check them while
I’m here’ – I figured I’d carried them around long enough by that point.’”
That decision was about to change the woman’s life.
“When the man at the counter put my second ticket through the machine I heard the winning noise, and honestly, I just
thought I’d won a bonus ticket.”
“That’s when he said ‘you’re a winner!’ and handed me a little yellow slip of paper that had the prize amount on it –
when I looked up at him I could see he was absolutely beaming! I read the slip of paper and thought it said $250 at
first – then I did a double take and realised it was a tad more than that,” the woman said.
Still in complete shock, the winner went home to share the exciting news with her husband.
“I always see the Lotto ads on TV and think how amazing it would be to win’ – it’s something you always dream about, but
for it to actually happen…well, we are absolutely blown away.”
“My husband and I have spent the past few days asking each other if the news has sunk in yet, the answer is still ‘no’
every time – I think it might take a while,” laughed the woman.
Thewinningticket was soldat Paper Plus Taupō for thedraw on Saturday 25 September2021.