B.C. man wins $6M while buying bandages during Toronto work trip

Troy Maulding is seen in an image from OLG.

A Metro Vancouver man won big while on a work trip across the country, coming back home $6 million richer.

Troy Maulding had been in Toronto for a conference, and bought the ticket on a whim while picking up bandages for a friend, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission (OLG) said in a news release Friday.

Maulding, from Burnaby, said he's been buying tickets long enough that he has regular numbers he chooses. The 55-year-old said he's been playing those numbers since he was 19.

This time, he got some with his regular numbers, but he also got a Lotto 6/49 ticket with automatically generated numbers – called Quick Pick. The decision paid off.

"I was having some quiet time in my hotel room when I checked my tickets," Maulding told OLG.

"The numbers I normally play didn't win. Then I started matching the numbers from my Quick Pick. I had to double check what I was seeing."

Maulding said he took a moment to himself, looking himself in the eye in the mirror and saying, "I won."

Then he texted his wife and sister-in-law a photo of the ticket, asking them to double check.

Maulding, who said he's normally a calm person, was so excited he couldn't wait for their response, so he called them instead, telling his wife to back her bags and join him in Toronto.

He'd received exciting news, but he also had to work.

"I had to hold it together because I had a job to do," he said.

But eventually he cracked and told his colleagues what happened. They thanked him for staying through the conference in light of the news, he said.

"I almost cried. I was so humbled by the outpouring of love."

As for what happens next, Maulding said his focus is family, and he has a goal in mind that might seem small in other real estate markets but not in Metro Vancouver.

"Once I retire from work, the first step will be to find a house to buy. The rest will fall into place after that."

Maulding won the top prize in the Aug. 6 draw, matching all six numbers.

The odds of that are one in 13,983,816, according to OLG.