A little scratching led to a lot of celebration for Joseph and Penny Huszti of Blind Bay.
For more than 20 years, Joseph's mom has been giving the couple a pack of Scratch 'N' Win tickets for Christmas. Because work for his stone works renovation company has been affected by slow economic times, Joseph has been working on the drilling rigs north of Fort Nelson, B.C. Fifteen days at a time, 12 hours a day, then one week off. Extreme weather, tough work.
Because he worked the Christmas week, he had just returned home to Blind Bay. After doing their banking and picking up his mom's registered package, Joseph and Penny sat down at home with a coffee, each scratching the lottery tickets. They've never had a substantial win.
"Penny thought her middle name was 'better luck next time,'" Joseph laughs.
As they sat scratching the tickets, Penny suddenly double-checked how one of hers worked. Joseph confirmed that a winner has three identical symbols.
"She said, 'you better look at this,' and we both said, 'Oh my god, it's not true.'"
The ticket was a $1 million winner.
Because of the holiday, the couple had to wait about three days before they could confirm the win with the Western Canada Lottery Corporation in Winnipeg.
"We'd look at it, put it away, the next morning we'd look again, did it morph into $20?"
The million dollar cheque has now been deposited in the couple's account – an act that had all the bank staff coming out to take a look at the unique cheque – and the Husztis are now left pondering the details of what to do with their new-found wealth.
"We're a hard-working, grindstone couple," says Joseph, explaining they have five children from 20 to 32 years, and their seventh grandchild will be born at the end of the month. Penny works at Zellers so would be losing her job in the summer when the store closes.
Joseph says they've been talking about their retirement, and wondering how they'll manage when he can no longer do the work best-suited to a younger man.
"I've put up with 20 years plus of hard, intense work, from highway paving to helicopter logging and with my own company, I've always worked the hard jobs – it just didn't seem the rewards were coming. We've had some misfortunes. We were talking that Freedom 55 looks more like Freedom 75."
The Husztis will now be paying for Joseph's mom, who's 72, to take a trip to Hungary to visit family. Joseph quit his drilling-rig job. And a new home and car might be on the horizon for the couple.
"We're not jet-setting, lavish people, so it's going to be a modest home. We can live comfortably, now we can wake up stress-free. It's life-altering, in a good way," he says.
And Joseph has a new term of endearment for his spouse.
"Her name is Penny, and now I can call her my lucky Penny. Not too many people can say they have, for real, a lucky Penny."