Despite knowing someone in Victoria had won a $13.6 million Lotto 6-49 jackpot, the winner didn’t check his ticket for nearly three weeks after the draw.
Retired auto mechanic Duarte Almeida bought his ticket Aug. 2 but figured he wasn’t the winner. It wasn’t until Thursday morning that Almeida finally got around to checking his ticket.
Duarte went into a local grocery store to check the ticket and returned to his wife, who was waiting in the couple’s blue, late model Dodge pickup.
“He was shaking. I just knew something had happened because of the way he was,” said his wife Lidia.
“We’re rich!” Duarte had said to his wife.
The couple then drove to another BC Lottery location to check the ticket again.
“I didn’t believe him and then it came up, ‘already claimed,’” said Lidia.
That’s when they started to panic, thinking their ticket might have already been claimed when in reality they had claimed it the first time they checked it at the grocery store.
They got back in their truck, boarded a ferry and headed straight to the BC Lottery Corporation headquarters in Vancouver and slept in their truck until the offices opened the next day.
They soon found out they were the winners of a $13.6-million jackpot.
“We only thought we had five numbers, so it’s just $1,900 but then this came up,” said Lidia.
Now happy and speaking to media, the couple has few plans for their newfound riches other than to buy a new truck, after leaving their blue Dodge behind in the winner’s parking spot at BCLC headquarters and opting to fly home to Victoria instead. The couple is talking about taking a trip back to their home country of Portugal.
“I’ve been in Canada since 1975 and I never went to Portugal yet. It’s time,” said Duarte.
The Almeidas are not the only lottery winners to leave their winnings unclaimed in B.C. The BCLC says there is still an unclaimed $50 million LottoMax prize purchased in Langley in March, which will be the largest jackpot ever won in the province, according to the BCLC.
With files from CTV’s Peter Grainger
