New cars and home renos on the to do list for $500,000 Whitby lotto winner

A Whitby woman has won half a million dollars on the lotto which she says is going toward new cars and some home renovations.

Heather Carnegie, an entrepreneur, has been playing the lottery regularly for the last eight years. She walked into the Petro Canada on Thickson Rd. ahead of the June 7 draw and bought a Daily Grand ticket.

These tickets are sold Canada-wide with a top prize of $1,000 a day and a second-place prize of $25,000 a year for life. Carnegie was out with her sister and nephew when she stopped for gas and decided to check her ticket.

“My nephew came into the store with me,” she told the OLG, “I scanned my ticket, did a double take, and checked it again. I was shocked and my legs started shaking!” Rattled as she was, Carnegie went out to the car and told her sister, “Get in here. I think I just won the lottery.”

Carnegie had won the second-place prize but waited to claim it because she “needed time to process what happened.” When she did go to Toronto to pick up her winnings she elected to get it all at once rather than in yearly installments. She told them she was going to fix up her house, invest and buy her self a new car. “My car is 17 years old. She’s served me well, but she’s tired,” she said.

“It’s such an incredible blessing,” she said, “Having my family with me when I discovered I won was wonderful. This is the best feeling in the world. It feels like a beautiful dream you never want to wake up from.”