Life changing

Community workers scoop £1Million with well-travelled lottery ticket

A EuroMillions ticket that travelled around Ireland and waited weeks to be checked has turned out to be worth £1Million to a group of charity workers from Derry-Londonderry.

The 23-strong syndicate will now pocket more than £43Thousand each after discovering that the EuroMillions UK Millionaire Maker code on their ticket for the draw on Tuesday 31st July was a winner.

The syndicate is made up of existing and former staff at the Greater Shantallow Area Partnership (GSAP), a community support agency operating across the northern part of Derry City.

Ticket on tour

Ten days ago, The National Lottery started a search across County Derry-Londonderry for the unclaimed £1Million prize – but syndicate manager Rory McParland was holidaying around Ireland at the time, unaware that a million-pound ticket was tucked in his wallet as he toured through Wicklow, Kilkenny, Killarney, Dingle, Tralee and Galway.

Happy home-coming

It wasn’t until Rory, 44, returned home that he heard the news of the unclaimed prize from his fellow syndicate members.

“The news of an unclaimed £1Million ticket had obviously spread around Derry,” said Rory, who is well known to keep tickets in his wallet for weeks without checking.

“So when I got home from holiday, the rest of the syndicate were naturally eager for me to check our tickets and see if we were the lucky winners.

“We’ve never won much before so hopes weren’t high when I took my tickets back to the Supervalu store where we’d bought them in the first place. As she checked the tickets, the shop assistant told me that we’d won £3 on one line, £5.20 on another and then £7.60 on another – which is our usual form.

“Then she stopped and said that we were going to have to call The National Lottery about one particular line as she wouldn’t be able to pay that amount over the counter. I asked what she meant and all she could tell me was that we had won ‘big money’,” he added.

Sharing the moment

Sharing the news with his fellow syndicate members was a moment Rory said he will never forget.

“So I rushed back to work and gathered as many colleagues together as I could to tell them the news,” he continued. “Then we all started checking our phones and the internet to see if we could find out how much we’d won.

“All of a sudden, people were saying ‘I think we’ve won a million’ and before we knew it, we were all jumping around the place, going mad, shouting and cheering. I think there were even a few tears shed.

“It was an incredible moment that I, and I’m sure all involved, will never forget.”

23 dreams

For years, the GSAP syndicate has been playing EuroMillions and Lotto, buying tickets for every draw and accumulating winnings to be shared at the end of the year.

“We’re still trying to come to terms with what has happened and take it all in,” said Rory. “It still doesn’t seem real for any of us. We’re just a group of ordinary people and I suppose none of us ever really thought we would win such a huge amount of money – but it just goes to show that you never know what’s around the corner.

“To think that this one win will change the lives of 23 families is amazing, whether it pays for a dream holiday, helps with the mortgage or whatever each member chooses to spend it on. Personally, I love holidaying in my touring caravan and have been wanting to buy a new car for ages – so I think that I’ll be spending some of my winnings on that,” he added.

30th August 2018

The National Lottery has been changing the lives of winners and supporting good causes across the UK since 1994. In that time, there have been more than 7,000 new millionaires created and by playing The National Lottery you raise over £4 million for Good Causes every dayΔ.

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