A young Hibiscus Coast couple have claimed the record-breaking $44 million Lotto prize, Lotto NZ has confirmed.
With more than 2.3 million tickets in the draw, the Hibiscus Coast couple woke up on Thursday morning and realised they had the golden ticket.
I was at work this morning on smoko break and decided to check our ticket. I saw that I had three numbers in a row, so I quickly checked that I had the Powerball number and then went back and checked the rest of the numbers,” the winner said.
“As soon as I saw I had all the numbers on one line I just yelled – my boss thought I’d chopped my arm off with a saw.”
The winner quickly jumped in his car and headed to a nearby Lotto store to officially check his ticket, busily trying to phone his wife the whole way there.
“As I was driving to the store, they were talking about the big win on the radio and I started screaming out ‘that’s me!’”
When he finally got through to his wife at work she had trouble believing that it was real.
“I saw a couple of missed calls from him and I thought something was up. I picked up the phone and said ‘babe, are you ok?’” the winner’s wife said.
“He said ‘we won’. At first I thought he was joking, but he managed to convince me. My head started spinning, my heart was racing and I got the shakes.”
The couple visited Lotto NZ’s head office on Thursday afternoon to claim their prize in person.
“As we sat in the winner’s room, he kept turning to me and saying ‘Am I in a dream?’ and I kept turning to him and saying ‘is this real?’” the winner’s wife said.
“I just wish I could have seen his face when he found out we’d won,” she laughed.
The win could not have come at a better time for the regular Lotto players, who have a young family.
“We’ve been busting our guts trying to buy our first home,” the winner said.
“We just went to the mortgage broker earlier this week to see what they could do to help. But they just couldn’t make anything work for us.
“We were absolutely gutted and I just said ‘maybe that ship has sailed’.
“But my wife tried to stay positive and said ‘don’t worry, something good will happen for us’.
“I don’t think either of us thought that the something good would be $44 million.”
They said they were still trying to process the win, which felt “unbelievable” and would change their lives “epically”.
“We’re definitely going to have a couple drinks tonight to celebrate,” the winner said.
The couple have a lot of decisions to make about how to spend their money.
“We want to be really smart about how we manage this money, so we’re going to take our time. We just can’t believe how lucky we are,” the winner’s wife said.
“All we know at the moment is that we’re going to give the kids a really great Christmas this year.”
The couple said they would continue working and would prefer to remain anonymous.
Nishchal Pandya, who owns the Dairy Flat Food Mart and Liquor store where the ticket sold as well as the one where the ticket was allegedly presented, said he was excited when he found out about his shop's first big win and hoped a local was the lucky winner.
He has bought a bottle of Champagne to celebrate with the winner.
Pandya sold about 2000 tickets yesterday, twice the amount of Lotto tickets he usually sells in a week.
Fourteen first division winners bagged $66,667.00. Three were from Auckland City, and one each from Mt Wellington, Pt England, Canterbury, Wairoa, Napier, Orakei, Mangere, St Heliers, Masterton, Christchurch and Te Awamutu.
The winning numbers for last night's record-breaking $44 million Lotto Powerball draw were 3, 21, 22, 1, 30, 29 and the bonus number was 5.
The winning powerball number was 6.
The winning stores
Eastridge Lotto - Auckland
Mangere Stationery and Post - Auckland
Maskell Lotto and Convenience - Auckland
MyLotto (x3) - Auckland
Paper Plus Sylvia Park - Auckland
Riverside Dairy - Auckland
Paper Plus Te Awamutu - Te Awamutu
Z Wairoa - Wairoa
Napier Food Mart - Napier
Paper Plus Masterton - Masterton
Countdown New Brighton - Christchurch
MyLotto - Canterbury
