A Blackfalds man has won $250,000, thanks to a lottery ticket he purchased a year earlier.
Stuart Purvis took home the windfall after the Extra on his Lotto 6/49 ticket matched all seven numbers on the Sept. 11, 2019, draw.
Purvis, who admits he is “usually not very good” at checking his tickets, picked up his winner the day of the draw last year at the Blackfalds Esso at 5113 Indiana St.
It sat with other unchecked tickets for a few months.
Purvis was out of the country for work earlier this year, when travel restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant he couldn’t return home until early August.
It was then – 11 months after he’d bought his winning ticket – that Purvis decided to work through his backlog.
He says he was floored when he found out about his win by using a ticket checker at the same Esso where he bought the ticket.
“I was just shocked,” Purvis said while claiming his prize in September.
“At first, I thought it was $2,500, and then I checked it again … and had to grab my glasses to count the zeroes.”
Purvis went immediately to another store to use its ticket checker to confirm what he was seeing.
He then booked an appointment to claim his prize. But before that meeting, he returned to the Esso to use its ticket checker again – just to be sure.
“I just still couldn’t believe it,” he said with a chuckle.
Purvis formally made his prize claim on Sept. 10, just one day short of a year from the winning draw date.
Ordinarily, his ticket would have expired on Sept. 11, 2020, but to accommodate players like him who may have been unable to claim prizes during the uncertainty and shutdowns earlier in the pandemic, the lottery corporation extended the claim period for some tickets.
Purvis said his plans for the windfall are pretty straightforward – he’s going to invest it.
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