What would you do with $55 million?
It’s the million-dollar question that one Yellowknife woman is asking herself after winning the Northwest Territories‘ largest-ever lottery jackpot in May.
And all she put in of her own money was $11.
“I’m just beside myself,” Tutcho told the Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC). “It’s so exciting and overwhelming.”
Tutcho wasn’t watching for the numbers on May 1, the day she won. She found out through her granddaughter that someone in Yellowknife had won.
“So I went on the internet to check the numbers,” she said. She soon found out she was the only player in the country to match all seven main winning numbers on the day of the draw.
“I was in shock,” she remembered. “I said, ‘Oh my God!’ My grandkids came in right away and ask, ‘Are you all right, Grandma?'”
Tutcho remembers that she kept looking between the numbers and her own ticket.
“My granddaughter told me, ‘The numbers haven’t changed, Grandma,'” she said.
The NWT & NU Lotteries also shared a brief message of congratulations for their community member on Facebook.
As the shock of her huge win wears off, Tutcho has been consulting with financial advisers on how best to invest her winnings. Her priority, though, is to help her immediate family, she told the WCLC.
Tutcho is a member of the Délı̨nę First Nation, according to her biography page on the Sahiti Renewable Resources Board website.
The freelance interpreter has dedicated her career to the revitalization of the Sahtúgot’ı̨ne language.
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