Life changing

Grantham girls grab £1M playing online

A syndicate of charity workers from Grantham are celebrating winning £1M on EuroMillions UK Millionaire Maker. The seven-strong Lucky Ladies syndicate, an all-female group who work at the Thera Trust Charity, are each £142,857.14 richer thanks to their life-changing win on 14th April.

The Lucky Ladies from Grantham are celebrating winning £1M on EuroMillions. The group of seven bought their ticket online and found out when syndicate leader Lynn McKinnon (62) saw the email with news about her ticket.

Lynn, who is a widow and a grandmother, explains, “My initial thought was that it was just a small win. I didn’t have my glasses on and just saw what I thought was a load of noughts. I thought it was one of those pop-up ads so hastily found my glasses, I couldn’t believe what I saw… my heart just started pounding.”

Lynn immediately called her daughter, Donna, and told her she thought the syndicate had won. Donna said it was probably a spam email and she’d pop around later.

“I told her to get around now! I wasn’t seeing things and I now had my glasses on. She arrived, we checked the ticket and I started shaking. I spoke to the National Lottery and the lady told me someone would call me back, but from the information I had told her, we had won £1M!”

Meet the Grantham girls who've banked a million

Ring round

Lynn immediately started calling the rest of the syndicate. “Not one person in the group believed me. The phone lines were red hot. We kept on calling and messaging each other so much so that I didn’t hear back from Camelot until the afternoon – the reason being that they just couldn’t get through because I was always on the phone.”

The syndicate all work at the Thera Trust, based in Grantham, which works hard to support adults with learning disabilities. Syndicate leader Lynn is a Senior Human Resources Assistant with the rest of the syndicate, who all live in or near Grantham, working across different departments. In all, four members of the syndicate, including Lynn, shared news of their win - Hayley Catterson (31) who is a Recruitment Advisor, and Personal Assistants Aimee Bidwell (28) and Serra Tuhladzhieva (33).

Lynn said, “It has been so nice to share this win with friends and we’ve loved celebrating together. With two of the syndicate on holiday straight after we found out that we’d won, we haven’t had the chance to be together. The win means so much to each of us in different ways – I can’t tell you how amazing it has been.”

The Lucky Ladies can't stop giggling

Life changing plans

The syndicate are planning to spend their winnings on everything from holidays, to new cars and houses, but Lynn has been told by her family not to be silly with her money.

Laughing, she said, “I have a bit of a reputation with my family. They think I’m a bit impulsive. Last year I went into town to buy a coat and ended up with a hot tub. But I will be buying a new house with the winnings and that’s very sensible. I’ll treat the family and celebrate with the syndicate. To be honest, I’m still in a daze, but it’s the best feeling ever!”

Lynn, who has been the leader of the Lucky Ladies syndicate for eight years, concluded that the win was about much more than material things. “I can plan for the future now. It may not sound that rock and roll, but at my age this is just perfect. It will make the rest of my life so much better. It’s a wonderful amount to be able to also treat the family - it just feels great.”

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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