VANCOUVER -- Eileen Bevis is not a regular Lotto 6/49 player, but on a spur of the moment grocery trip, she bought a ticket on an impulse.
“I was just checking my ticket as I do every time there’s a draw, and couldn’t believe it.”
Bevis immediately texted her friend, Bev Atchison.
“For once in my life I was speechless – boom -- life has changed,” Atchison said.
The pair went for coffee that morning, and as Atchison recalls, before they got out of the car Bevis turned to her and asked if she wanted a new car.
“I said ‘Are you kidding me? Sure!,’” Atchison said.
Bevis then bought a new car for herself and one for Atchison, her friend of 20 years.
Bevis bought the ticket from a Save-On-Foods in Aldergrove, and said she plans to invest most of it and then donate to a variety of charities.
“Just today I’ve donated $45,000 ... I’m working on the list still,” she told CTV News Vancouver, adding she’d donated already to the Langley Seniors Centre, the Food Bank, Cancer Research and an animal protection society.
Bevis is already a big giver, said Atchison, and she keeps adding new charities to her list for donations.
“She’s always wanted to help people. She’s a driver at the seniors centre, she goes and drives people to their appointments and things,” Atchison said.
“She’s got a heart of gold and she’s always been a giver.”
“It couldn’t have happened to a better person,” said Atchison, “and I know that she’s going to use it well and live a different life than she ever lived.”
But Bevis isn’t depriving herself of the winnings either and says she will be moving into the penthouse suite of her retirement home.
“(I) Can’t go on a world tour because of the travel restrictions and right now that doesn’t bother me at all,” she said, “if I can go eventually that would be great.”
Winning a Lotto 6/49 jackpot requires matching all six numbers in a draw without using the bonus. The odds of doing so are said to be infinitesimal, at one in 13.98 million.
The odds of matching six numbers including the bonus are one in 2.3 million, but that only nets the winner six per cent of the prize pool.
