One Auckland woman has had a lifechanging lockdown claiming the $11.5 million prize in Powerball first division on Saturday.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, first discovered by email just how lucky her yellow ticket was early on Sunday morning.
"I happened to wake up really early on Sunday morning and was catching up on things on my phone while I waited for the rest of the house to wake up," the woman told Lotto. "That's when I saw I had an email from Lotto NZ saying that I had a prize to claim and all I could think was 'surely not'.
"I kind of just brushed it off and went back to what I was doing," laughed the woman.
The woman who bought the ticket through the Lotto NZ App waited until after breakfast to finally check her ticket.
"I opened the Lotto NZ App and saw 'congratulations' pop up almost straight away," she says. "I glanced at the prize and actually read it as $11,500 - I was stoked with that."
"But after checking my ticket a few times, I looked at the prize amount more closely and started to second guess myself - $11,500,000 was staring back at me and it felt like an awful lot of zeros.
"I ended up typing the number into Google just to double check what I was seeing, before I got too excited," laughed the woman.
Once comprehending she had become New Zealand's newest multi-millionaire, the woman wrote the prize amount down on a piece of paper and raced out of her room to share the news with her sister.
"She woke me up actually," the winner's sister says. "I was having a bit of a sleep in when she woke me up with a piece of paper in my face, asking me to double check it for her.
"I was so bleary that I wasn't sure what was going on - I could barely make sense of all the zeroes either."
After confirming that the woman wasn't dreaming, the pair then went about their day as usual.
"We tried to keep things pretty normal and I couldn't sit still though," said the woman. "Later in the day, we headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few things and decided to give Lotto NZ a call while we were in the carpark, just to double check everything.
"When the woman on the phone confirmed that I had won $11.5 million... well, it was unbelievable," she says. "My sister and I just sat in the car screaming - it was such a cool moment."
With the country in Level 4 lockdown, celebrating is limited to a few treats.
"Being in lockdown means there isn't a lot we can do to celebrate, but I went straight into the supermarket and grabbed a few treats," the woman says. "We actually celebrated with ice creams in the car."
After a whirlwind twenty-four hours and with her prize now claimed, the woman is looking forward to enjoying her winnings.
"I've always dreamed of buying my first home and am so excited to finally be able to do that," she says. "I'm very family oriented, so I'm really excited to be able to help my family out and set them up for the future.
"It means so much to me and I feel so incredibly lucky. I'll never forget this lockdown, that's for sure."
The $11.5 million winning Powerball ticket was sold on MyLotto and was made up of $11 million from Powerball First Division and $500,000 from Lotto First Division.
This is the fifteenth Powerball winner this year, which totals to $148.81 million and comes three weeks after an Ashburton player won $5.3 million with Powerball First Division.
