Winners

Family syndicate win amazing £61Million EuroMillions jackpot

Ever had a ‘feeling’ lady luck was smiling on you? What did you do? Well, thankfully a family syndicate of five from Wales decided to buy a EuroMillions ticket which resulted in them scooping a mammoth £61.1Million jackpot.

Stephanie Davies, from Monmouth, reluctantly left her house late on Friday evening after she’d had a call from her mum Sonia pleading with her to pop out and buy a EuroMillions ticket – and, boy, is she glad she did!

Sonia and her partner Keith Reynolds were on holiday in Florida at the time, but after the week they’d had, felt that lady luck was shining upon them – and after reading about the huge jackpot they knew they just had to buy a ticket.

Stephanie explained, “I thought mum was mad calling me from holiday, but they were so insistent I knew we had to do it.”

A very lucky week

Sonia and Keith were in the USA for two important reasons – to see Keith’s daughter graduate and for Sonia to have surgery. Earlier in the year, she had been diagnosed with a tumour on her parathyroid gland and after researching her options, discovered that the world-leading treatment centre was near where they were on holiday and she could have keyhole surgery there.

Sonia said, “What a roller coaster of a week we’ve had! I had my operation on Wednesday and until then, we didn’t know how serious it was. They told me if it hadn’t been removed it would have been fatal – and at the very least I would have lost my voice within a year. They managed to give me the all-clear straight after the operation, so as you would imagine, we were on cloud nine.

Stephanie bought six Lucky Dips for the EuroMillions draw on Friday 29 July 2016 but it wasn’t until the early hours of Sunday morning that she remembered to check the tickets. After dinner with friends, on her way up the stairs, she said to Steve, “If I shout down it means we’ve won the lottery and if not, I’ve gone to bed.”

“We’ve won and I’m not joking”

Checking the numbers on her iPad, she realised they had all of them – and read that one UK ticket-holder had won the whole £61,102,442.90. She said, “I came back downstairs to find Steve and couldn’t take my hand away from my mouth in shock. I kept saying ‘we’ve won and I’m not joking’.

“I could see Steve was trying to read me to see whether I was telling the truth but I was so emotional, he decided to check. And he checked again. We giggled. We memorised the numbers and checked again. We checked the draw date again. We locked all our windows and doors and spoke in hushed voices just in case someone could hear that we had won. It was all very MI6 – very secret service!”

Desperate to share the unbelievable news, Stephanie called her mum who was now waiting to board her delayed fight home.

Sonia said, “I was worried there was a problem. All I could hear was Steph sobbing down the phone and the odd muffled word. I thought she’d told me she’d lost her dog. Then I heard Steve shouting ‘we’ve won £61Million!'

“We put them on speaker phone so Keith and I could both listen, but realised everyone in the airport could hear, so we huddled round a bin while we checked the numbers and realised we really had won! I can remember saying ‘if we don’t make it home just make sure you spend it all’. It was the longest flight of our life!”

At 1:45am, Stephanie called the last member of the fifth member of the syndicate, her sister, Courtney. Answering the phone quickly because she thought something was wrong, Courtney said, “Steph just kept saying she didn’t know what to do. She then said we’d won the lottery. We kept repeating ‘oh my god’ to each other, over and over.

What’s next for this lucky family?

With the win still sinking in, each member of the syndicate are starting to think about what they are going to do with their £12,220,488.58 share of the jackpot. Steph and Steve bought their first home together at Christmas, so they want to spend some time decorating it how they would like as well as a trip to the Caribbean.

Courtney is studying at the University of Southampton and has just finished the first year of a Psychology degree. She plans to complete her degree before deciding what to do next but has two items on her shopping list – an electric toothbrush, as she always wanted one but never felt she could justify spending £50 on one, and a new car to replace her VW Fox which has no air con and wind-up windows.

Sonia and Keith, who live near Ross-on-Wye are looking forward to sharing their win with family and friends, although Sonia would like a new oak carport for her property. “Winning is just like living the dream,” she said and Keith added, “now we really are minted!”

4th August 2016

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