$50M Lotto Max prize winner finnaly get their money after 7 months

Susan_zhao

Andrea and Bill Groner managed to keep their lottery windfall in the immediate family for seven months.
But the Edmonton couple's exciting news is now out -- they are the mystery winners of the $50-million Lotto Max jackpot from Dec. 20.
Andrea and Bill Groner are the winners of.
  `9 X+ S2 O" S" i) VAndrea discovered the win two days after the draw when she stopped at a shopping mall and checked the ticket at a self-serve scanner.
! f5 E7 ]$ l/ e' u3 EThe couple decided to keep to their normal routines for awhile and continued to work.
; ?; K4 i6 e  B, O$ L" j: @/ g& r4 P6 hBut now that their identity has been revealed, they say they want to help family, friends and charities.
, n2 z" U' Z' S' V"We have some ideas for the money," Andrea said as they picked up their cheque Tuesday at the Western Canada Lottery office.
% J" x' \9 |- W"We'll take it one day at a time," Bill added.
Andrea recalled her reaction when she found out the ticket was a winner.
* U' _" s" Z; x$ O"I saw the amount on the screen. I didn't have my glasses on, but I saw a lot of numbers," she said. "I asked the store clerk to look, too. She asked how much I thought I'd won. I said, 'I won the lottery?"'
Not wanting to be overheard on the phone in the mall, Andrea waited until she got home to tell her husband the news.
  ^, L4 f! b9 \7 z- q2 U"I had to double-check the numbers in the paper to be sure," he said. "It was hard to believe."
! [# }4 j  [$ j$ qWhen asked how they managed to keep to their normal lives, Andrea said it's not that easy to make a wholesale change.
# H) f+ Q, r5 s& {, s5 F5 k  d" l! r0 g"A lot of people think they'd quit their job as soon as they found out," she said. "But you have friendships and relationships with the people you work with and it's hard to just cut those ties. You don't want to leave people in the lurch."
The winning ticket was bought at a tobacco kiosk at Londonderry Mall in northeast Edmonton.
It's the second-largest lottery prize ever won in Alberta. The largest Canadian windfall also came from that province -- $54.3 million won by oilfield workers in a Lotto 6-49 draw in October 2005.

Susan_zhao

A Fort Saskatchewan couple claimed a $50 million jackpot Tuesday after buying the winning ticket last December.
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Andrea, 47, and Bill Groner, 54, finally came forward a month after the Western Canada Lottery Corporation called on lottery players to check their old tickets.

9 `5 C7 z2 v! T. o1 Y# S5 q4 dIt turns out the couple knew they had a winner the whole time but made a conscious decision not to wait seven months before claiming the enormous prize.
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“We carried on with life, day to day, normal people,” Andrea said.

5 _4 m) B6 i1 x! w8 W“We chose not to discuss with people until we knew where we had to be and what we had to do and just get our life in order.”

' n1 K) v/ E6 O8 y6 [/ |' h9 x+ EAndrea bought the Lotto Max quick-pick ticket at Shefield Express in Londonderry Mall on Dec. 20, making the prize the biggest ever won by a ticket sold in Edmonton and the second biggest in Alberta.
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“When I checked the ticket, the first thing I should have had was my glasses, because I didn’t have those with me,” she said. “I had to get the retail clerk there to tell me what was said on the self-scanner.

" [. c' L) ^4 G5 u, c3 ^“She was more excited than I was at the time. I was in disbelief.”
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" x8 g( O% R) QBill had recently retired from his job as a heavy equipment operator, while Andrea is still working as a project co-ordinator at an electrical firm and was planning to retire in December.

5 u9 J" G: R5 \' @* z7 _- AThe couple has kept on buying tickets since picking the winner.
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0 R* m  \: G( V9 o. ?0 OAndrea and Bill both say they don’t have immediate plans for spending the money, and that they hope to maintain their “normal” day to day lives.
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* S6 F7 \  A* c9 ?“It’s more money than what one could ever dream of having,” Andrea said.

( X$ U- \' ]. c& R6 ?( Z“We don’t want to rush into anything.”
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She did suggest, however, that it might finally be time to take a honeymoon.

1 z. ]+ K0 |; c! D“We’ve been married 25 years and we haven’t been on a honeymoon yet,” she said.

Their winning numbers were 2, 13, 18, 24, 27, 37 and 43.